{"id":184608,"date":"2026-06-23T10:53:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newslink360.space\/?p=184608"},"modified":"2026-06-23T10:53:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:23:54","slug":"sarah-sandler-on-sailing-towards-a-new-solution-for-drug-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newslink360.space\/?p=184608","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Sandler on sailing towards a new solution for drug discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n The Humans of the Wyss (HOW)\u00a0series<\/a> features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as professionals, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond.<\/em><\/p>\n

In sailing and in science, it\u2019s important to communicate and stay calm in stressful situations, which is something postdoctoral fellow Sarah Sandler knows well. As a competitive sailor, she has raced all over the world and in difficult conditions, where things change quickly. At the Wyss, she is taking on a different type of challenge: developing NanoDEX, a nanopore-assisted therapeutics discovery platform for historically difficult-to-drug targets, and working towards its translation. Learn more about Sarah and her work in this month\u2019s Humans of the Wyss.<\/p>\n

What are you working on?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Sarah
Sarah Sandler, Postdoctoral Fellow. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m\u00a0working on\u00a0NanoDEX, a platform that helps discover drugs for targets that the pharmaceutical industry has historically struggled to screen. Many disease-relevant proteins, or targets, are considered \u201cundruggable\u201d because they are flexible, lack obvious binding pockets, or\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0have stable structures that conventional tools can easily model.<\/p>\n

NanoDEX\u00a0uses nanopore-based single-molecule measurements to directly read out how millions of molecules interact with these difficult targets. That gives us both hit\u00a0discovery, meaning the ability to\u00a0identify\u00a0promising molecules that interact with a biological target in a therapeutic way, and the high-quality kinetic data needed to train AI models for lead optimization.<\/p>\n

Recently,\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0was renewed as a\u00a0second-year\u00a0Validation Project<\/a>, and I am excited to keep advancing this technology towards translation.<\/p>\n

What real-world problem does this solve?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Our first application is focused on intrinsically disordered proteins in neurodegenerative disease, where these flexible proteins can form toxic aggregates, or dangerous and misfolded clumps, that are difficult to measure and target with conventional drug-discovery tools. In this case, the conformation, or specific shape, of the protein is relevant to the disease\u2019s toxicity. Having a tool like\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0for high-throughput screening of different\u00a0conformations of proteins\u00a0is essential. We are\u00a0identifying\u00a0new compounds that could bind to these intrinsically disordered proteins and exert a therapeutic effect.<\/p>\n

What inspired you to get into this field?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Sarah
Sarah presents her early scientific work on horseshoe crabs in a high school science fair. Credit: Sarah Sandler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Growing up by the water on Long Island, I was fascinated by horseshoe crabs. I learned that their blood\u00a0contains\u00a0amebocytes, immune cells that detect bacterial\u00a0toxins\u00a0and cause blood clotting in their presence to smother the threat. Because of this, they have been harvested excessively, and many species of horseshoe\u00a0crab\u00a0are now endangered.\u00a0I got involved with research in high school, motivated by my desire to help protect them.<\/p>\n

As I continued to dive deeper into science, I became interested in using nanotechnology to understand biology at the scale where molecular interactions\u00a0actually occur. When I got to college, I trained as a materials science engineer and then did graduate work in nanoscience and nanotechnology as well as biophysics, so my work has always been grounded in how materials, molecules, and biological systems interact at\u00a0very small\u00a0scales.<\/p>\n

During my Ph.D. and postdoc, I kept returning to the same idea: nanopores are an incredibly flexible way to measure biology.\u00a0I explored different applications, first around\u00a0nucleic-acid\u00a0and protein interactions<\/a>, and then I started thinking about how the same principles could be applied to drug discovery. That felt like a natural next step because so much of drug discovery depends on measuring whether molecules interact with a target, and for many difficult targets, those measurements are still\u00a0really hard\u00a0to make well.<\/p>\n

What continues to motivate you?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019m\u00a0motivated by the idea that better measurement tools can unlock better medicines.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0seen repeatedly that important biology is often limited by the tools we\u00a0have to\u00a0study it.\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0grew out of that realization. If we can directly measure molecular interactions that conventional technologies struggle to measure, we may be able to expand what biology we can drug, especially in diseases where patients still have limited options.<\/p>\n

What excites you most about your work?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

What excites me most is that\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0brings together several things I care about: nanoscale measurement, difficult biology, AI, and drug discovery.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0always thought nanopores were a\u00a0really powerful\u00a0tool because they can measure molecular interactions directly at the single-molecule level. It is exciting to take that capability and apply it to targets that have historically been hard to screen.<\/p>\n

The AI side is especially exciting because it makes this much more possible than it would have been a few years ago. Nanopores generate rich but complicated signals, and newer models give us a way to analyze those signals at a scale and depth that was not\u00a0really possible\u00a0before. That means we can start to think about the platform not just\u00a0as a way to\u00a0find hits, but\u00a0as a way to\u00a0learn from the data and design better molecules over time. The combination of high-quality experimental interaction data and AI-driven analysis is one of the most powerful parts of\u00a0NanoDEX.<\/p>\n

What are some of the challenges that you face?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Sarah
One of Sarah\u2019s favorite things about the Wyss is being surrounded by others who are also trying to translate their technologies into companies. Here, she poses with a few of her entrepreneurial friends and colleagues. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The biggest challenges are around scaling and productization, which are exactly the areas we are focused on now. Scientifically, we are continuing to increase throughput while preserving the high-quality signal that makes the platform valuable. Computationally, we are building models that can\u00a0identify\u00a0binding patterns across large nanopore datasets and improve as more data is generated. From a company-building perspective, the key next step is packaging the platform into a workflow that pharma partners can easily understand,\u00a0validate, and adopt. These are\u00a0real challenges, but they are also\u00a0clear\u00a0engineering and execution problems, and our early data gives us\u00a0a strong foundation\u00a0to build from.<\/p>\n

Why did you want to work at\u00a0the Wyss?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I first became interested in the Wyss during my Ph.D. A postdoc I worked with early on,\u00a0Nicole Weckman<\/a>, left\u00a0Cambridge\u00a0University\u00a0to join the Wyss and work with\u00a0Jim Collins<\/a>. When we caught up, she told me about the environment there and how people would sit in the kitchen over lunch,\u00a0coming up with\u00a0company ideas.\u00a0She described this really collaborative community where people were not just doing great science but also thinking seriously about how to turn it into something useful.<\/p>\n

\n

I wanted to be somewhere where people were excited about both\u00a0the science\u00a0and\u00a0the translation, and where starting a company from academic work felt like something people\u00a0actually did.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>

Sarah Sandler, Postdoctoral Fellow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That stuck with me. Pretty early in my Ph.D., I knew I wanted to be in a place like that.\u00a0I wanted to be somewhere where people were excited about both\u00a0the science\u00a0and\u00a0the translation, and where starting a company from academic work felt like something people\u00a0actually did.<\/p>\n

What is unique about\u00a0the Wyss? How has that\u00a0impacted\u00a0your work?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The community is what feels most unique to me. Trying to translate\u00a0a technology\u00a0into a company is really hard, and there are a lot of moments where experiments do not work, or the next step is not obvious. At\u00a0the Wyss, I have many friends and colleagues who are also trying to do this, which makes the\u00a0whole process\u00a0feel much less\u00a0isolating. Being around people who are building companies, thinking about translation, and dealing with similar challenges makes it easier to keep going when things get difficult. It is a very unusual environment because people understand both the technical and company-building sides.<\/p>\n

How do you collaborate with and\/or receive support from teams across the Wyss Institute?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Sarah
Sarah has received support from others across the Institute, including the Business Development Team. Here, she poses with two of its members, Sam Inverso and Alexander Li at the Institute\u2019s Holiday Brunch. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I work a lot with\u00a0Ken Carlson<\/a>, the Senior Director of Translational R&D, and he has been a true mentor to me. He has helped me understand how therapeutic development works and how to think about the experiments that will matter for translation. That has been essential because, as a scientist, it is easy to get excited about a technically interesting experiment, but building a platform means thinking carefully about which data will move the project forward.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0work with the\u00a0Business Development Team<\/a>, which has helped me think through partnerships, commercialization strategy, and how to communicate\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0to external audiences.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0also joined the\u00a0Translational AI Catalyst<\/a>\u00a0at the Wyss, which connects people working with large datasets, machine learning, and computational methods. This has been especially useful as more of\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0depends on using AI to analyze complex nanopore signals.<\/p>\n

How have your\u00a0previous\u00a0work or\u00a0personal experiences\u00a0shaped your approach to your work today?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My background has made me\u00a0very comfortable\u00a0working across fields.\u00a0Materials science, nanotechnology, physics, biology, and engineering all come at problems in\u00a0different ways, and\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0really needs pieces of all of them.\u00a0I think my training\u00a0keeps me from being intimidated by problems that do not fit cleanly into a single discipline.<\/p>\n

\n

Materials science, nanotechnology, physics, biology, and engineering all come at problems in\u00a0different ways, and\u00a0NanoDEX\u00a0really needs pieces of all of them.\u00a0I think my training\u00a0keeps me from being intimidated by problems that do not fit cleanly into a single discipline.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>

Sarah Sandler, Postdoctoral Fellow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It also shaped how I think about measurement. A lot of my work has been about trying to understand interactions that are happening\u00a0at\u00a0very small\u00a0scales. I think that has made me appreciate how important the right tool can be. Sometimes\u00a0the biology\u00a0is there, but we do not have the right way to measure it clearly enough. That is a big part of how I think about\u00a0NanoDEX.<\/p>\n

What do you like to do outside of work?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Outside of work, I\u2019m an avid competitive sailor. I race on larger boats and have competed around the world. In May, I raced from the Cape to Nantucket, and earlier in June, I raced from Connecticut to Block Island.\u00a0During my Ph.D., I did the\u00a0Rolex Middle Sea Race<\/a>, a five-day race around Sicily, and I helped deliver boats across Europe. I have my Royal Yachting Association Yachtmaster Certification, so I\u2019m licensed to charter boats and have done fun cruising trips with friends in countries like Greece and Croatia.<\/p>\n

\nSailing has taught me a lot about leadership, staying calm in stressful situations, and communication. When you are offshore or sailing in difficult conditions, things can change quickly, and everyone\u00a0has to\u00a0work together. I think that has influenced how I approach stressful situations in science and company-building.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s\u00a0something unique or fun about you that someone\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0know from your resume?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I love long-distance hiking and backpacking! Last summer, I hiked the John Muir Trail, which is about 220 miles from Yosemite to Mount Whitney, and Mount Whitney was one of the hardest physical challenges\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0ever done. This summer,\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0hiking\u00a0the West Highland Way in Scotland, which is about 100 miles. I usually do these trips with one of my close friends from\u00a0undergrad, and we get into a real rhythm on the trail. In some ways, the trips are\u00a0almost more\u00a0mentally challenging than physically challenging. You spend so much time managing discomfort, uncertainty, weather, and exhaustion, but also just continuing to move forward. I like having that kind of challenge outside of science because it gives me something completely different to focus on.<\/p>\n

\n