Sean Morrison

Dr. Morrison is founding Director of the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (since 2011) and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator (since 2000). He holds the Mary McDermott Cook Chair in Pediatric Genetics and the Kathryne and Gene Bishop Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Research at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The Morrison laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate stem cell function and the role these mechanisms play in cancer. They identified a series of mechanisms that act intrinsically within stem cells to promote stem cell maintenance and tissue regeneration in multiple tissues. The Morrison lab also identified niches (specialized microenvironments) that maintain stem cells in adult hematopoietic tissues, including the bone marrow. They also identified the skeletal stem cells in adult bone marrow and new mechanisms by which they maintain and repair the skeleton. The Morrison lab also studies pathological cell replication, particularly the mechanisms that regulate metastasis. They discovered that the survival of melanoma cells during metastasis is limited by oxidative stress. Rare metastasizing cells survive by undergoing metabolic changes that confer oxidative stress resistance. Melanoma appears to metastasize first through lymphatics because the lymphatics protect melanoma cells from oxidative stress.

Dr. Morrison completed a B.Sc. in biology and chemistry at Dalhousie University, a Ph.D. in immunology at Stanford University, and a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology at Caltech. From 1999 to 2011, Dr. Morrison was Director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Michigan and in 2011 he founded Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern. Dr. Morrison was a Searle Scholar (2000-2003), received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2003), and a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Aging (2009). He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (2018) and the National Academy of Sciences (2020). Dr. Morrison served as the President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2015–2016) and has been active in public policy issues related to stem cell research, receiving the ISSCR Public Service Award in 2022.