David Sanders (biologist)


David Sanders is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. He grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and then attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Yale College in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. He conducted his Ph.D. research in Biochemistry with Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., who was then editor of the journal Science, at the University of California at Berkeley. Sanders demonstrated that the response regulators in the two-component regulatory systems were phosphorylated on an aspartate residue and that they were protein phosphatases with a covalent intermediate.

Scientific career

He originated the idea of the "Molecule of the Year" feature in Science. He was a Visiting Scientist at the University of California at San Francisco, and then a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, which is affiliated with MIT. It was there that he began his studies on the entry of viruses into cells with a focus on the inhibition of infection and applications to gene therapy.
He joined the Markey Center for Structural Biology at Purdue University in 1995, where he was the leader of the Molecular Virology program and also a member of the Cancer Center. He was the discoverer of a biochemical reaction, thiol-disulfide exchange, that leads to the entry of cancer-causing retroviruses into cells. He also is the primary inventor on two U.S. patents on novel gene-therapy delivery techniques.
His work on the Ebola virus led to his participation in the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program, a product of the Nunn-Lugar legislation. His responsibilities included inspecting the Vector laboratory in Siberia, which was the site of biological-weapons development in the era of the Soviet Union. He has investigated the transmission of viruses from other animals, especially birds, to humans and has been invited to speak on ethics, biodefense, evolution, gene therapy, vaccination and influenza viruses in public forums including regular interviews on WIBC in Indianapolis,
He is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Career Award for his work on an enzyme that is involved in production of the greenhouse gas and potential energy source, methane He is also an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. In 2003 he conducted his sabbatical research at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.
Sanders has been a vocal critic of the Science article authored by Felisa Wolfe-Simon and Paul Davies in which the discovery of arsenic-based life is claimed. Sanders has argued that the original Science article on the arsenic bacteria should be retracted on the basis that the data in the paper were misrepresented in the article.
Sanders's work on the Ebola virus led to media interviews during the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak in Western Africa. He declared that there was little risk on infection for the individual American and asserted that the panic about the virus could be worse than the disease in the United States. He was an early advocate of focusing on regional centers as places for treatment of Ebola virus victims in the United States and asserted that patients should share their travel history whenever they meet with a medical provider, stating, "If you go to South America or East Asia there is a different ensemble of possible diseases associated with a set of symptoms, and the physician won't necessarily think about them if he isn't aware of where you've been traveling recently."
He opposed mandatory quarantines for asymptomatic patients that may have been exposed to Ebola virus. Sanders wrote an article about his experience with the media including an encounter with Karl Rove.
During the Coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak Sanders has been interviewed about the science behind public policy.
He was reported to have criticized President Donald Trump for touting the use of chloroquine as a treatment for Coronavirus disease 2019.
According to the New York Times, Sanders has been responsible for contacting scientific journals and obtaining corrections and retractions of articles by Carlo M. Croce. Sanders "has made claims of falsified data and plagiarism directly to scientific journals where more than 20 of Croce’s papers have been published." In 2017 Croce filed a defamation lawsuit against Sanders, who was quoted in the New York Times article that reported allegations of scientific misconduct against Croce. In May 2020 Croce lost the defamation lawsuit against Sanders, with the presiding judge writing that "iscovery has proved the existence of about 30 instances of fabrication or duplication" in Croce's research papers and that "Sanders has a knack for detecting image duplication and remembering the blots he sees reported in scientific journals."
Sanders argues that plagiarism is a serious academic issue that must be confronted. He also maintains that guest authors are plagiarists and offers a simpler definition of plagiarism.
Sanders authored an article on reforming grant peer review with the goal of reducing bias.
An article by Sanders was featured among a collection about keeping up with the contemporary academic literature.
He has also described new approaches to developing the literary skills of graduate students in the sciences and rubrics for how to write a scientific review article.
Sanders has narrated how he became a scientific detective.
In his role with the Purdue University Senate, Sanders criticized the inconsistent application of the free speech policies by the Purdue University administration and President Mitch Daniels.
A Purdue University Board of Trustees member responded with an attack on his opinion piece.
As Chair of the Purdue University Senate, Sanders has published a statement of academic principles.

Political career

Sanders was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 4th District of Indiana in 2004 and 2006. He was also elected by Democrats of the 4th Congressional District of Indiana to serve as a delegate pledged to Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
On January 21, 2010, Sanders filed as a candidate for Indiana's 4th Congressional District followed by an appearance on CNN with the announcement of Steve Buyer's resignation. Sanders was defeated by Todd Rokita. In a discussion about gerrymandering he referred to Indiana's 4th Congressional District as having been drawn so that it was "No Republican Left Behind."
On November 3, 2015, Sanders was elected as a City Councilor At-Large for West Lafayette. On November 5, 2019 David Sanders was reelected as a City Councilor At-Large for West Lafayette.
He was featured in an interview in Science magazine in June 2010 and in the book "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" by Shawn Lawrence Otto. He has also written about the myth of the skills gap.
In his role as City Councilor Sanders sponsored a resolution declaring West Lafayette a "machaseh" — that is, a refuge for immigrants.