David Sabatini, MD, PhD

David Sabatini is a Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Senior Associate Member at the Broad Institute and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. David received his B.S. from Brown University magna cum laude and his M.D./Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1997. David was appointed a Whitehead Fellow later that year. He became a Member of the Whitehead Institute and Assistant Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002, and received tenure in 2012. David has received several awards, including the 2009 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, the 2012 Earl and Thressa Stadtman Scholar Award, the 2017 Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, and the 2017 Dickson Prize in Medicine. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.

The Sabatini laboratory has a longstanding interest in cell signaling and metabolism in cancer, as well as in technology development. His lab has recently adapted the CRISPR/Cas9 system for large-scale genetic screening in mammalian cells, with the goal of identifying novel dependencies in cancer. This can be used to detect new vulnerabilities in ovarian cancer cells, as well as help identify new targets that can increase chemotherapeutic sensitivity in ovarian cancer cells.