Stephan Grupp
Stephan A. Grupp is an American pediatric oncologist who leads the Cell Therapy and Transplant Section and heads the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). He is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for his pioneering work in cancer immunotherapy.
Grupp is best known for developing and advancing CAR T-cell therapy, a treatment that uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer. He led the world’s first CAR T trials in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at CHOP and helped create an effective immunotherapy for this disease. A famous early case is Emily Whitehead, a seven-year-old who recovered after CAR T therapy when doctors treated a dangerous immune reaction with tocilizumab. His work has since expanded to include CRISPR-based gene editing research for sickle cell disease.
Grupp was born to German immigrant physician parents and studied at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned his B.S., Ph.D. in immunology, and M.D. He trained in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital before joining CHOP in 1996. He became CHOP’s chief of the cellular therapy and transplant section in 2017. He has received numerous honors for his contributions to biomedical science and cancer treatment, and he also contributed to research on MIS-C during the COVID-19 era.
Under his leadership, CAR T-cell therapy progressed from early trials to FDA approval for relapsed or refractory pediatric and young adult patients with B-cell ALL.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 09:59 (CET).