During his PhD studies in the laboratory of Professor Lawrence Young at the University of Birmingham (1992-1996), Murray made several important contributions to the field, including the demonstration of unique patterns of virus latency in EBV-associated Hodgkin lymphoma (e.g. Murray et al., J Pathol; 1992) which subsequently led to the description of three epidemiologically and clinically distinct forms of EBV-associated Hodgkin’s lymphoma (e.g. Murray et al., Blood; 1999).
The impact of these studies was recognized by the award of a prestigious Louise Buchanan Fulbright Fellowship which funded Murray’s post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Richard Ambinder at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore.
This work led to three major papers, two of which (Murray et al., Blood; 1996, Murray et al., Blood; 1998) provided much of the underpinning evidence to support the use of cytotoxic T cells for the treatment of EBV-associated lymphomas, an approach which has since been shown to be highly successful in controlling post-transplant lymphomas.
In 2000 Murray set up his own laboratory in the Department of Pathology at the University of Birmingham and initiated studies on B cell lymphomas that contributed several important discoveries in the field, including: the first description of the c-FLIP-mediated anti-apoptotic phenotype in lymphoma (Dutton et al., PNAS 2003); the discovery of aberrant mTOR kinase activation in Hodgkin’s lymphoma which subsequently led to the successful use of the mTOR inhibitor, everolimus, in the treatment of patients with relapsed Hodgkin’s lymphoma (Dutton et al., J Pathol 2005); and the identification of collagen receptor signalling as a mediator of chemotherapy resistance in lymphoma (Cader et al., Blood 2013).
Recently, The Murray lab’ has developed new in vitro systems which have allowed interrogation of the early steps in B cell lymphomagenesis (e.g. Vrzalikova et al., Blood 2011); studies which are already beginning to impact the design, discovery and pre‐clinical evaluation of therapeutic approaches to cure children with B cell lymphomas.