Zelig Eshhar, the Israel Prize-winning immunologist and cancer researcher known for his studies on T cells and pioneering work on chimeric antigen receptors, Zelig died on July 3rd, 2025. He was 84. Born in Petah Tikva in 1941, Eshar was the oldest of Yaakov and Sarah Lipke’s four children. He grew up in Rehovot, where he graduated from high school. Afterward, he enlisted in the Israel Defense Force’s Nahal Brigade, which brought him to live on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.

While working as a beekeeper there, he developed a passion for science and nature, leading him to leave the kibbutz so he could study agriculture in Rehovot.

After a year, he transferred to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he received a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in biochemistry. He completed his doctorate at the Weizmann Institute in the lab of Michael Sela and continued to postdoctoral studies at Harvard University under the tutelage of Nobel Prize laureate Baruj Benacerraf.

In 1982, he was awarded a professorship at the Weizmann Institute and began working on his most well-known research topic: the genetic engineering of T cells.

Eshhar’s breakthrough was the genetic reprogramming of T cells, which are a type of white blood cell that assists the body’s immune system, to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

In an interview with The Times of Israel in 2017, Eshhar said that because of his research, T cells “now recognize cancer and will be efficient because I’ve engineered them to attack the cancer. And that is what we call Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR).”

When put into patients, the cells are “very effective” because they have the two elements that recognize the cancer and can reject it. “That is all the trick.”

Eshhar won the Israel Prize in life sciences in 2015 and the Dan David Prize in 2021. He served as the chair of the immunology department at the Weizmann Institute and as the head of the immunology research center at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.

Eshhar developed the technology for the Israeli firm Kite Pharma, which was acquired by US pharma company Gilead Sciences Inc. for $12 billion in 2017.

“My real prize is saving lives,” he was quoted by Haaretz as saying. “Sick people becoming healthy is more important than any cash prize, honor or glory.”

In a statement following his death, Ichilov Hospital wrote that Eshhar “was among the fathers of CAR T therapy, a real revolution in cancer research, which gave new hope and life to countless patients around the world. Because of him, Israel became a world leader in immunotherapy, and patients who didn’t have hope received a new chance.”

The hospital added that “beyond his unprecedented scientific achievements, Prof. Eshhar was a guide, mentor and extraordinary character, committed to his students, colleagues and to science.”

Eshhar is survived by three children and six grandchildren.