Dr. William Sellers is a core institute member and director of the cancer program at the Broad Institute and a professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. At the Broad Institute, Dr. Sellers directs a research group focused on translating genomic discoveries into new therapeutics. His lab is focused on both functional genomic approaches to understanding routes for therapeutic development including digenic paralog CRISPR screens, and systematic gain-of-function lethality screens, and on creating new routes for developing therapeutics and understanding therapeutic action.
Previously, Dr. Sellers directed cancer drug discovery and early cancer clinical development at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where he oversaw all cancer research and clinical sites from 2005 to 2016. During this time, more than 30 small molecule, biologic and cell-based cancer therapeutics entered first-in-human trials. Ten therapeutics have reached market approval, including encorafinib, alpelisib, ribociclib, asciminib and tisagenlecleucel.
Earlier, Dr. Sellers was an associate professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute. He collaborated with his Dana-Farber and Broad colleague Matthew Meyerson to lead the Broad’s first major foray into cancer genome sequencing. Their work, as well as work by other groups including investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital, led to the identification of EGFR mutations in lung cancer – work that paved the way for EGFR-inhibiting drugs becoming standard-of-care for patients.
Among other achievements in his career, Dr. Seller’s was the founder of Civetta Therapeutics, a co-founder of Delphia Therapeutics and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Ideaya Bioscience and Epidarex Capital. Additionally, Dr. Sellers was a previous member of the National Cancer Advisory Board.
Dr. Sellers holds a BS from Georgetown University and MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He completed residency training in internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco and trained in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.