William Sellers

William Sellers is a widely-respected cancer researcher with deep experience in cancer genomics and therapeutic discovery. He is a faculty member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), and Harvard Medical School (HMS).

William Sellers has spent his academic career at the intersection of cancer biology and cancer genomics. His research efforts have focused on investigating the basic mechanisms of tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes, and elucidating the molecular pathways of cancer, through high-throughput genetic sequencing and other genomics approaches. William Sellers co-led the Broad’s first major foray into cancer genome sequencing, work which helped lead to the identification of EGFR mutations in lung cancer – a finding that helped pave the way for EGFR-inhibiting drugs becoming standard-of-care for patients. In addition, his efforts to understand the genetic alterations in prostate and other cancers contributed to the discovery of MITF as an important gene in the development of melanoma.

In 2005, William Sellers took a position as Vice President and Global Head of Oncology for the Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research. There, he pioneered the use of cutting-edge genetic and functional genomic approaches to drug discovery, creating an oncology drug discovery unit that became world-renowned.