Michel W. Sadelain is a genetic engineer and cell therapist at Columbia University New York, New York. He is the Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET). Sadelain also serves as the Director of Columbia University Irving Medical Center's Cancer Cell Therapy Initiative in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Sadelain was previously the Steve and Barbara Friedman Chair, founding director of the Center for Cell Engineering, and the head of the Gene Transfer and Gene Expression Laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is best known for his major contributions to T cell engineering and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy, an immunotherapy based on the genetic engineering of a patient's own T cells to treat cancer. Sadelain also pioneered the use of lentiviral vectors to treat severe hemoglobinopathies such as β-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. Sadelain is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of France and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.