PORTER GIFFORD
As a 24-year-old MD-PhD student joining the Johns Hopkins University lab of neuroscientist Solomon Snyder in the early 1990s, David Sabatini was allowed to work on any project he chose.
Instead of tackling one of the lab's on-going research questions, however, Sabatini focused on a small molecule known as rapamycin that lab mates were using as a control in some experiments.
Isolated in the 1970s from a soil bacterium, rapamycin was known to have powerful antifungal, anticancer, and immunosuppressant effects in mammals and yeast. "It had these profound clinical effects in many diseases and yet there was very little known about it," says Sabatini. He had a hunch that identifying the molecular target of rapamycin in mammals might elucidate a cellular pathway of fundamental importance.
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