Dr. Morton is an accomplished surgical oncologist and a renowned clinical scientist whose fundamental discoveries have profoundly changed the treatment of human cancer. His pioneering work with intratumoral bacille Calmette-Guerin for melanoma represented the first successful clinical application of immunotherapy against a metastatic human cancer. His innovative studies of sentinel node mapping changed the standard of care for patients with early-stage malignant melanoma and other solid cancers that drain via the lymphatic system.
Dr. Morton has received NIH peer-reviewed research funding for 35 years; in the year 2000 he topped a list of clinical investigators who received the most grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (Science June 15, 2001). Dr. Morton’s scientific contributions towards the immunology of cancer and surgical oncology have yielded more than 600 publications in peer-reviewed journals and have garnered him a long series of prestigious awards and honors. Dr. Morton is the past president of the International Sentinel Node Society, past president of the Society of Surgical Oncology, and past president of the World Federation of Surgical Oncology Societies.
Dr. Morton was chief of the division of surgical oncology at UCLA before establishing the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. As Chief of the Melanoma Program, Dr. Morton has guided the Institute to its present position as an internationally respected melanoma center. As Director of the Surgical Oncology Fellowship Program, Dr. Morton has trained more than 100 postdoctoral fellows, most of whom hold academic positions in medical schools or cancer institutes.
Education
- B.A. University of California, Berkeley
- M.D. University of California, San Francisco
- Intern, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, CA
- Resident – Surgery, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, CA
- Clinical Associate – Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD
- Resident/Fellow – Surgery, Cancer Research Institute, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, CA
Research Interest
Site-specific metastasis, cytoreductive surgery, therapeutic vaccines, immunomodulation
Pub Med Publications
Click here for research publications.
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