Investigating fundamental questions of cancer cell biology
David Sabatini, MD, PhD, is an American Cancer Society Research Professor, a Member of the Whitehead Institute, and Professor of Biology at MIT. In 2020, he was co-recipient of the prestigious Sj\xf6berg Prize\u2014which promotes scientific research on cancer, health, and the environment\u2014for discovering the mTOR protein and its role in controlling cell metabolism and growth.\n\n1:55 \u2013 How his research lab has been impacted by the pandemic\n\n3:04 \u2013 The history of how TOR was discovered, going back to a soil sample from Easter Island\n\n5:25 \u2013 How mTOR is kind of like the general contractor for the cell (\u201cWell, we need more proteins, we need more lipids, we need more mitochondria\u2026\u201d)\n\n6:34 \u2013 If mTOR is the \u201cgeneral contractor,\u201d then what is it building? And what are the signals that tell it to make things?\n\n8:27 \u2013 \u201c\u202680% of cancers have to find a way to turn on mTOR\u2026\u201d \n\n14:34 \u2013 Why inhibiting mTOR to treat cancer isn\u2019t such a straightforward proposition\n\n18:50 \u2013 Research tools that he and his team have developed; for example, one of his students developed the first CRISPR libraries and some of the original CRISPR screening technologies\n\n25:39 \u2013 On \u201cmolecular nutrition\u201d and research into how diet affects you at the molecular level\n\n27:24 \u2013 How ACS funding has impacted his work\n\n30:12 \u2013 His message for cancer patients and caregivers