With "pure" Matlab-supplied functions, no. You would have to do it indirectly, reading the header row then finding the desired string location therein. As xlsread is quite slow already, almost surely at least as fast to simply just read the full sheet and save what you're interested in.
I'm sure it's also possible with COM to write specific commands but that becomes an Excel VBA syntax problem, not Matlab once the automation server is created.