William Sellers

William Sellers is a core institute member and Cancer Program director at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A cancer scientist with deep experience in cancer biology and therapeutics, he leads a research group that translates genomic discoveries into new therapeutic opportunities, with a particular focus on defining synthetic lethal targets, developing new biotherapeutic modalities, and driving small molecule drug discovery. 

Early in his career, Sellers initiated and developed several large-scale efforts to discover genetic alterations in cancer, collaboratively establishing and defining molecular drivers of cancer transformation and growth including co-leading the discovery of EGFR mutations in lung cancer, defining MTIF as a  lineage specific oncogene, and elucidation the molecular functions of the PTEN tumor suppressor gene. Between 2005 and 2016, Sellers directed cancer drug discovery and early cancer clinical development as vice-president/global head of oncology at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR). At NIBR, he led efforts that brought 30 cancer therapeutics to clinical trials and 10 to market approval, established collaborative efforts to create foundational resources for cancer genomic discovery including the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia and Project DRIVE. He also co-chaired the CAR-T collaboration between Novartis and Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania that led to tisagenlecleucel, the first FDA-approved cell-based gene therapy.