# Michal Besser

Source: https://onco.cc/people/michal-besser/  
OnCo record `michal-besser` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Runs the laboratory that actually grows the cells. Her papers are the reason anyone outside the United States believed a hospital could manufacture tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes reliably.

## Summary

Michal Besser leads cell therapy laboratory work at Sheba's Ella Lemelbaum Institute and is first author of its intent-to-treat report on tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy in metastatic melanoma, which found blood lactate dehydrogenase, sex, days in culture and the number of infused CD8-positive cells to be independent predictors of outcome. Her laboratory has published the practical protocols that others copy: how to establish and expand TIL cultures, how to transduce them retrovirally with a chimeric antigen receptor or a T-cell receptor, and how microRNA expression in the infused product tracks with response. Work of this kind is why a small country with one dominant referral centre can run a cell therapy programme that larger health systems find hard to reproduce.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-25
- Tags: scientist; cell-therapy
- Role: Head of the Ella Lemelbaum Institute cell therapy laboratory, Sheba Medical Center; Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University
- Specialisms: Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes; Adoptive cell therapy; T-cell manufacturing; Genetic modification of T cells

## Sources

- Sheba Medical Center cancer centre: https://www.shebaonline.org/departments/cancer-center/
- PubMed author search: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Besser%20MJ%5BAuthor%5D%20tumor-infiltrating%20lymphocytes

## Connected records

- cancers: [Melanoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/melanoma/)
- fronts: [Cell Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/cell-therapy/)
- technologies: [CAR-T cell therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/car-t/), [TIL therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/til-therapy/)
- institutions: [Sheba Medical Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/sheba/), [Tel Aviv University](https://onco.cc/institutions/tel-aviv-university/)
- bottlenecks: [Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-manufacturing-cell-therapy/)
- key papers: [Adoptive transfer of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in patients with metastatic melanoma: intent-to-treat analysis and efficacy after failure to prior immunotherapies](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-besser-til-melanoma-intent-to-treat-ccr-2013/)

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