NYU School of Medicine
Faculty Member Receives France's Highest Scientific Honor
The French Academy of Sciences selected Dr. David Sabatini
as the recipient of its highest honor for 2003, the Grande
Medaille D'Or (the Grand Gold Medal), in recognition of his
scientific contributions to Cell Biology. Previous recipients
of the Medal include many illustrious scientists, such as Louis
Pasteur, Pierre and Marie Curie, Gustave Eiffel, and Henri
Poincare.
The Grande Medaille was presented
to Dr. Sabatini at a formal ceremony held in Paris under
the Grand Coupole of the Institut de France.
The Medal is given every year to
a French or foreign scientist working in one of the many
disciplines represented in the Academy, which include the
mathematical, physical, chemical, natural, biological and
biomedical sciences. The award recognizes a decisive contribution
to science in one of these areas and emphasizes the originality
of the discoveries, their international impact, and the awardee's
role in creating a true school of research. The rules
of the Academy stipulate that the work of the recipient of
the medal must have been carried out in an important area
of fundamental research, and must have resulted in new insights
and a greater understanding of the discipline in which the
award was given.
The Academy cited Dr. Sabatini's work as having revolutionized
research in Cell Biology through his innovations in electron
microscopy and through seminal biochemical studies on the sorting
mechanisms that generate the organizational complexity of the
cell.
In the early 1960's Dr. Sabatini introduced glutaraldehyde
as a reagent that preserves the fine molecular architecture
of the cell, as well as many of its enzymatic activities. His
methods led to the discovery of new structures within the cell,
most notably microtubules and other components of the cell
cytoskeleton. They also helped to elucidate the functional
role of subcellular organelles, opening many new avenues of
research in cell biology.
Proteins are the most important
functional components of cells and much of Dr. Sabatini's
research dealt with the mechanisms and pathways, which newly
synthesized protein, distributes molecules to their sites
of function within the cell. His work on the synthesis of
proteins by ribosomes attached to the membranes of the organelle
known as the "Endoplasmic Reticulum" set
the foundations for the "Signal Hypothesis", which
he formulated in 1971 together with his then associate, Gunter
Blobel, the Rockefeller University scientist, who, in 1999,
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. This
hypothesis explains how secretory proteins, such as insulin
and growth hormone, synthesized in the deep interior of glandular
cells, begin their journey toward the blood stream. It
also applies to many nonsecretory proteins that share their
subcellular site of synthesis with secretory proteins but are
subsequently sorted to various destinations within the cell.
This is the case for many important receptors that remain anchored
at the cell surface, where they recognize hormones and growth
factors that activate cellular response pathways.
Defects in protein sorting and transport underlie many diseases,
such as cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer's and certain forms of hypercholesterolemia
that lead to atherosclerosis.
Sabatini has also carried out pioneering research using cultured
epithelial cells of kidney origin, which provided great insights
into the protein trafficking mechanisms that are responsible
for the generation and maintenance of the polarized architecture
of epithelial cells. Cells of this type, such as those that
line the digestive tract and cavities within various organs,
form layers that serve to separate different physiological
compartments and control transport of molecules between them.
A major achievement of his laboratory was the landmark discovery
that different types of enveloped viruses, a class of viruses
that includes influenza, rabies and HIV, bud from the cellular
membrane of epithelial cells with characteristic polarity,
i.e. the viral particles are released either from the apical
surface of the cell, which faces an external space that communicates
with the environment, or the basolateral one, which confronts
the internal milieu of the body and is accessible to the bloodstream.
These findings explain the routes by which viral infections
spread within the organism and throughout the population. They
also served as a foundation for a continuing stream of discoveries
over the last thirty years, throughout the world, that illuminate
how the complex organization of the cell is achieved.
Dr. Sabatini is a native of Argentina, and he received his
medical degree in that country from the University of Litoral
in Rosario in 1954 and his Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University
in 1966 where he remained on the faculty until 1972, when he
became Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology
at the NYU School of Medicine.
Dr. Sabatini is a member of the
US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and
the Institute of Medicine. In 1986, he was
awarded, together with Gunter Blobel, the E.B. Wilson medal
from the American Society for Cell Biology, and in 1988 he
received the Charles-Leopold Mayer Grand Prix of the French
Academy of Sciences.#