Dr. Murphy served as the inaugural Director of the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute (GCCRI) from 2002-2008 and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA).
Dr. Murphy was the Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Children’s Memorial Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago from 1988-2002. Before joining Northwestern in 1988, Dr. Murphy was Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and a full Member in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis where she began her career in 1974. She completed her internship and residency in Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical Center from 1969-1971 and her fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania from 1971-1973. Dr. Murphy earned her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1965 and graduated cum laude with her M.D. from Harvard University in 1969.
Dr. Murphy has served as a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health, as a member of the Awards Assembly of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, and a member of the External Scientific Advisory Board of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Ohio State University, as well as numerous editorial boards. She has served on advisory boards and grant review committees of the Leukemia Society of America, the Lymphoma Research Foundation, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She has previously served on the Boards of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Hematology, and the American Cancer Society, and she is past President of the Harvard Medical Alumni Association. She is currently a consultant to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research of the FDA.
In 1992, in recognition of her leadership, Dr. Murphy was elected by her peers to the position of Chair of the Pediatric Oncology Group (POG), one of then only two NCI-sponsored clinical collaborative research groups in the United States and Canada dedicated to the treatment of childhood cancers. POG was comprised of over 100 member institutions with approximately 2000 patients per year registered on any of the approximately 80 open research protocols. She provided the overall scientific, administrative, and organizational leadership for POG for close to a decade, a period of remarkable growth and productivity in the group research efforts, until its merger with the Children’s Cancer group to form the Children’s Oncology Group in 2001.
Dr. Murphy’s research experience and interests are broadly related to clinical trials and translational research in pediatric cancer, with particular focus on the biology and therapy of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and lymphomas. She devised a staging system for non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) and led trials to reduce the intensity and duration of treatment for children with favorable localized disease. She developed a new treatment regimen for advanced stage Burkitt lymphomas and B-ALL, Total Therapy B, refining and intensifying the regimen in a series of nationwide POG trials which resulted in cure of over 80% of children with once uniformly fatal forms of pediatric cancer. In parallel with her treatment research, she has conducted studies of the biology of ALL and NHL, focusing on kinetics, surface markers, immunophenotype, karyotype, and ploidy. These studies have led to a wealth of new knowledge and directly led to improved classification and stratification for risk-adapted treatment protocols. Dr. Murphy’s other research interests include HIV-related pediatric malignancies, new agent development, and the ethics of research in children.
The author of more than 230 original articles, reviews and chapters, Dr. Murphy also has been recognized by Woodward and White Inc.’s Best Doctors in America.
In 2005, Dr. Murphy was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for Scientific Leadership by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She is just the fourth individual to receive this prestigious award, which was established to honor the career and achievements of individuals who, through a blend of outstanding leadership skills and ground breaking scientific vision, have transformed the practice and profession of oncology.