David M. Sabatini
David M. Sabatini (born January 27, 1968) is an American scientist and a former Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2002 to 2021, he was a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He was also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2008 to 2021 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. He is known for his contributions in the areas of cell signaling and cancer metabolism, most notably the discovery and study of mTOR. In August 2021, Sabatini was fired from the Whitehead Institute  and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and placed on administrative leave from MIT following an investigation related to sexual harassment during his work at the Whitehead Institute. Sabatini later resigned his tenured professorship position at MIT. Biography. David M. Sabatini was born and raised in New York to David D. Sabatini and Zulema Sabatini, both Argentine immigrants from Buenos Aires. He obtained his B.S. from Brown University followed by both his MD and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he worked in the lab of Solomon H. Snyder. He joined the Whitehead Institute as a Whitehead Fellow in  1997, the same year he matriculated from Johns Hopkins. In 2002 he became an Assistant Professor at MIT and a Member of the Whitehead Institute. He was promoted to tenured professor in 2006. Sabatini currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is an avid biker and gardener. His father, David D. Sabatini, is a cell biologist and Professor at New York University. His younger brother, Bernardo L. Sabatini, is a neuroscientist and Professor at Harvard Medical School. Sabatini is the scientific founder of Navitor, Raze Therapeutics, and KSQ Therapeutics. Allegations of sexual misconduct. On August 20, 2021, an investigation conducted by  an independent law firm, Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, concluded that Sabatini violated several of the Whitehead Institute's policies, including policies on sexual harassment. Following the results of this investigation, both the Whitehead Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute ended their association with Sabatini. Sabitini resigned from MIT following the recommendation of three senior MIT officials to revoke his tenure. In October 2021, Sabatini filed a lawsuit against the Whitehead Institute, its director Ruth Lehmann, and one of his accusers, claiming that he was the victim of false claims made to “exact revenge against a former lover.” In December 2021, Sabatini 's accuser filed a civil lawsuit claiming that Sabatini coerced her into sex and that his laboratory had a “toxic and sexually-charged” environment. Sabatini's attorneys denied the new allegations that had been made against him. As of April 2022, Sabatini has resigned from his position as professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, following internal investigations, review, and recommendation that Sabatini’s tenure be revoked. According to an email sent to faculty by President Leo Rafael Reif on April 1st, the reviewers found that “Professor Sabatini behaved in ways incompatible with the responsibilities of faculty membership  and that Professor Sabatini violated MIT’s Consensual Sexual or Romantic Relationships in the Workplace or Academic Environment policy.” In April 2022, the NYU Grossman School of Medicine was considering hiring Sabatini. Scientific contributions. As a graduate student in Solomon Snyder’s Lab at Johns Hopkins, Sabatini began working on understanding the molecular mechanism of rapamycin; a macrolide antibiotic discovered in the soil of Easter Island that has potent antifungal, immunosuppressive, and anti-tumorigenic properties. Although the TOR/DRR genes had been identified in 1993 as conferring rapamycin resistance in budding yeast, the direct target of rapamycin and its mechanism  of action in mammals was unknown. In 1994, Sabatini used rapamycin and its binding partner FKBP12 to purify the mechanistic Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) protein from rat brain, showing it to be the direct target of rapamycin in mammals and the homolog of the yeast TOR/DRR genes. Since starting his own lab at the Whitehead Institute in 1997, Sabatini has made numerous key contributions to the understanding of mTOR function, regulation, and importance in diseases such as cancer. For example, his lab discovered the mTORC1 and mTORC2 multi-protein complexes, the nutrient sensing Rag GTPase pathway upstream of mTORC1 , as well as the direct amino acid sensors Sestrin and CASTOR. ] Sabatini’s research interests have expanded in recent years to include cancer metabolism as well as technology development surrounding the use of high-throughput genetic screens in human cells, most notably through the use of RNA interference and the CRISPR-Cas9 system. As of 2016, Sabatini has authored over 250 publications and has an h-index of 142 as of April 2022.