“Our work has real potential to reduce the severity of age-related diseases”

Recognized with the 12th Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine, biologist David Sabatini explains how the mTOR signaling pathway regulates cell growth in mammals and why this mechanism is key to understanding metabolism, aging, and cancer development. Sabatini discusses the challenges this discovery has posed in clinical practice, its implications for future therapies, and how basic research in molecular biology translates into advances for human health.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine has gone in this twelfth edition to U.S. researchers Michael Hall and David Sabatini, for discovering the cellular mechanism that is “the major regulator of growth in animal cells, and plays a central role in physiology, metabolism, ageing and cancer,” in the words of the committee.