Sep 21, 2026 —
The 2026 Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science has been awarded to Steven Rosenberg, Michel Sadelain, and Carl June for their foundational work on CAR-T and adoptive cell therapies. (The Tang Prize also recognized Susan Solomon in Sustainable Development.)
Rosenberg pioneered adoptive cell transfer and tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy. Sadelain and June were central to engineering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and moving them into patients. Their work turned the idea of using a patient’s own immune cells as a treatment into a clinical reality.
CAR-T therapies are now approved across several blood cancers and remain one of the clearest demonstrations that engineered cells can work as medicines, the branch of the field PackGene’s viral-vector and plasmid work helps supply.
