Whitehead’s Sabatini named
“Distinguished Young Scholar” by W.M. Keck
Foundation
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (July 13, 2005) — Whitehead
Associate Member David
Sabatini has been chosen by the W.M. Keck Foundation
as one of this year’s grant recipients under the
Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research program.
Established in 1998, the program aims to support research
investigating the fundamental mechanisms of human disease
by young scientists “who exhibit extraordinary
promise for independent basic biological and medical
research and who demonstrate a capacity for future academic
leadership.”
Sabatini, who is one of five award recipients chosen
from a pool of 30 applicants, will receive up to $1
million over the next five years to support his work.
Sabatini studies the mechanisms that regulate cell
growth. Spurred by the discovery of a cellular pathway
that helps to switch cell growth on and off, research
in the Sabatini lab has linked growth to a cell’s
ability to sense nutrients in its environment.
This growth-triggering system, known as the TOR pathway,
is composed of a complex of proteins that respond to
nutrient cues. Sabatini is working to identify TOR pathway
components and study how they interact and work. His
efforts to understand mammalian TOR at the cellular
level have provided a new way to investigate the role
nutrients and metabolism play in disease.
“This is wonderful,” says Sabatini, who
is also an associate professor of biology at MIT. “This
type of honor validates all the hard work that everyone
in my lab has done over the last few years and gives
us the resources to pursue innovative projects in the
future.”
"David Sabatini being named a Keck Scholar is
a wonderful affirmation of what all of us at Whitehead
already knew," says Whitehead Interim Director
David Page. "Sabatini is a rising leader in his
generation; he is a bold, passionate, and accomplished
biomedical scientist with a very bright future."
All of this year’s award recipients will participate
in the Fifth Annual Distinguished Young Scholars Symposium
to be held on May 2, 2006.
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