GarethMorganMDPhD, FRCP, FRCPath

Summary

• Dr Morgan is a recognized international expert and thought leader on multiple myeloma and its treatment. He has been a major force translating genetic advances from the laboratory to the clinic to improve patient care. He has received peer-reviewed project and programme funding for the last 25 years. Within the laboratory his initial work concentrated on chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) where he was involved in the molecular characterisation of the Philadelphia chromosome and was the first person to apply sensitive DNA and RNA based PCR for the detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) in CML; and in paediatric ALL where he published the first molecular characterisation of the t(11;19). These interests in both MRD and how transcription factor abnormalities and epigenetic change act as drivers of cancer progression now continue in multiple myeloma, as he believes this disease provides an excellent model system of cancer progression with which to study such events. Utilizing large patient sample sets from clinical trials on which he has been a principle investigator, he has published extensively on treatment advances and the genetics of myeloma initially utilising FISH, SNP arrays and more recently WES and WGS, and identified the importance of evolutionary biology in myeloma progression. To study the role played by the cells of the bone marrow microenvironment he has explored de-convolution algorithms, applicable to RNA extracted from whole bone marrow biopsies, and more recently utilized high-throughput flow cytometry and single cell technologies to further define these cells. Using 10X WGS he has also defined missing driver variants and characterized complex structural chromosomal rearrangements and determined their prognostic significance.