Carl H. June

Carl H. June is the director of translational research at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania.^[1] June graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1975 and served as a naval officer before graduating from Baylor College of Medicine in 1979.^[2] He studied immunology and malaria with Dr. Paul-Henri Lambert at the World Health Organization in Switzerland from 1978 to 1979 and did a postdoc in transplantation biology with Dr. E. Donnell Thomas and Dr. John Hansen at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle from 1983 to 1986. He was the head of the department of immunology at the Naval Medical Research Institute from 1990 to 1995. He was a professor of medicine and cell and molecular biology at the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences before becoming a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999.^[3]

June has been a pioneer in the field of immunotherapy, most widely known for the development of T-cell therapy for cancer.^[4] In the 1980s his lab discovering the CD28 molecule as the major control switch for T cells. A few years later, he tested the ability to culture genetically modified CAR-Ts in humans, discovering the cells could engraft and persist in patients with HIV/AIDS for years.^[4]

Awards

• Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Society, 1978
• Fellow, American College of Physicians, 1991
• Frank Brown Berry Prize in Federal Medicine, 1997
• Lifetime Achievement Award, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America, 2002
• William Osler Award, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 2002
• Federal Laboratory Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer, 2005
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Freedom to Discover Award, 2005–2009
• Elected to Institute of Medicine, 2012
• Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2014
• Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence, 2014
• Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Science, 2014
• Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award, AABB, 2014
• Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, 2015

References