The Morrison laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate stem cell function and the role these mechanisms play in cancer.  They have identified a series of mechanisms that distinguish the self-renewal of stem cells from the proliferation of restricted progenitors as well as identifying niches that maintains stem cells in adult hematopoietic tissues. The Morrison lab has also studied the mechanisms that regulate metastasis, discovering that melanoma metastasis is limited by oxidative stress. Rare metastasizing cells survive this stress by undergoing metabolic changes that reduce the generation of reactive oxygen species and confer oxidative stress resistance. This suggests the possibility of limiting cancer progression with pro-oxidant therapies that exacerbate the oxidative stress experienced by cancer cells.  Dr. Morrison completed a B.Sc. in biology and chemistry at Dalhousie University (1991), a Ph.D. in immunology at Stanford University (1996), and a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology at Caltech (1999). Dr. Morrison is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator (since 2000), the founding Director of Children’s Research Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (since 2011) and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018. Dr. Morrison served as the President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2015-16), has testified before the U.S. Congress, and served as a leader in the successful “Proposal 2” campaign to protect stem cell research in Michigan’s state constitution (2008).