The Sands laboratory, in the Center for Translational Research in Neurodevelopmental Disease (CTRND) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center is dedicated to understanding disease mechanisms and developing novel therapeutic approaches for genetic causes of neurodevelopmental disability and epilepsy. Care of these patients is currently limited to therapies that attempt to address the symptoms of the disorder with limited results.
Using a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach, our team employs techniques from the fields of neuroscience and genetics to study of mouse and human cellular models of neurodevelopmental disease. An overarching mandate of the laboratory is that clinical insights from the bedside inform the investigations at the bench and that these investigations, in turn, have as their ultimate purpose, the improvement of care for patients.
Welcome to the Sands Lab
Tristan T. Sands, MD., Ph.D.
Tristan T. Sands, MD, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons (Columbia VP&S) Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics. He is a pediatric neurologist who treats children and babies suffering from epilepsy and a physician scientist with expertise in genetic causes of epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disease.
Dr. Sands completed his MD-PhD at Columbia VP&S through a Medical Scientist Training Program with thesis work in lab of Dr. Arnold Kriegstein. During child neurology residency at UCSF, Dr. Sands trained in electroclinical phenotyping of the epilepsies under Dr. M. Roberta Cilio. After finishing his clinical training at Columbia VP&S in epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology with Dr. Jim Riviello, he joined Columbia VP&S as faculty in 2017, first training in neurogenetics at the Institute for Genomic Medicine, and then returning to the bench to study genetic epilepsy using mouse models under the mentorship of Dr. Wayne Frankel.
Dr. Sands has worked closely with families to treat hundreds of children with epilepsy. He is the author of chapters on pediatric epilepsy and genetic epilepsy in major textbooks in the field of neurology, including Merritt’s Neurology and Swaiman’s Pediatric Neurology. Dr. Sands has served as an expert on ClinGen’s epilepsy gene curation panel since 2017. In 2023, he was named Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society in recognition of professional accomplishment and dedication in the field of epilepsy.
Dr. Sands was named a 2024 Louis V. Gerstner Scholar. His research contributions include demonstration of the exquisite efficacy of carbamazepine for neonatal epilepsy caused by inherited loss-of-function variants in KCNQ2 and KCNQ3, work that led to changes to the International League against Epilepsy guidelines and recommendations on the treatment of seizures in newborn babies. He reported the electroclinical characterization of a new gain-of-function phenotype caused by de novo variants in KCNQ3. Dr. Sands reported variants in NBEA as a cause epilepsy and neurodevelopment, and he characterized the largest cohort of patients with epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disability caused by pathogenic variants in CSNK2B.
