Harry E. Bovay, Jr. Lecture Set for Jan. 24
David Sabatini, MD, PhD, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present the 2020 Harry E. Bovay, Jr. Annual Lecture on “mTOR and the Regulation of Metabolism.”
The lecture will be held at 11 a.m. on Jan. 24 in the Beth Robertson Auditorium at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM).
Sabatini is a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also a senior associate member at the Broad Institute and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and an American Cancer Society Research Professor.
Sabatini and his lab study the basic mechanisms that regulate cell growth. A major factor of the lab is the target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway, a major regulator of growth in many eukaryotic species. This has resulted in the identification of many components of the pathway and to an understanding of their cellular and organismal functions, most of which have implications for diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
Sabatini is also interested in the role of metabolism in cancer and in the mechanisms that control the effects of dietary restriction on tumorigenesis. Additionally, his lab has developed new technologies that facilitate the analysis of gene function in mammalian cells.
Sabatini received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University magna cum laude and his MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins University. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the 2014 NAS Award in Molecular Biology, the 2017 Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the 2017 Dickson Prize in Medicine, the 2018 Abraham Spector Prize, and the 2019 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.
The lecture series honors the life and work of Harry E. Bovay, Jr. (1914-2011), distinguished visionary, entrepreneur, civic leader, and philanthropist who made a significant contribution to the IMM to help bridge the gap between the laboratory bench and the patient bedside, between identifying the molecular causes of diseases and actually preventing them.