UAMS Names New Leader For World-renowned Myeloma Institute

Dr. Gareth Morgan has been named director of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy (MIRT), succeeding founder and current director Dr. Bart Barlogie.

Barlogie will remain on staff and devote his full-time to clinical care and research.

Morgan, who is currently a clinician and researcher with the Myeloma UK Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, will begin at UAMS on a full-time basis in July.

“I am thrilled to be taking up this new post and very much look forward to the opportunities it presents.” Morgan said. “With support from UAMS, I will build on the excellent work done to date as well as its reputation as world leader in myeloma treatment to develop innovative approaches for all myeloma patients and to characterize and cure high-risk myeloma.

“Myeloma is different for each individual patient, as different as one fingerprint is from another. It’s critical to develop technologies that can read this fingerprint, and to determine what is driving the disease in each individual patient, so we can kill or normalize the behavior of the myeloma cells. There isn’t a single treatment for myeloma but rather, there are many different, personalized treatment strategies, one of which is appropriate for a particular individual patient.”

Morgan received his doctorate on the genetics of leukemia from the University of London in 1991 and his bachelor of medicine in 1981 from the Welsh National School of Medicine. Since 2003, he has served as a professor of Hematology and director of the Centre for Myeloma Research at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research in London, Europe’s largest comprehensive cancer institute.

Gov. Mike Beebe released $5 million in general improvement funds to the Myeloma Institute in connection with the announcement.

“As Governor, I am very pleased to provide funding to support the Myeloma Institute and Dr. Morgan’s research,” Gov. Mike Beebe said. “What has been built at the institute by Dr. Barlogie is truly remarkable and has enabled Arkansas to become a world leader in the research and treatment of multiple myeloma. With this funding and Dr. Morgan’s guidance, I’m confident the UAMS Myeloma Institute will continue pushing forward to fulfill its mission in innovative and dynamic ways.”

Barlogie, director of the UAMS myeloma program since 1989, is confident that Morgan is the right person to assume the reins and said he welcomes the opportunity for the two of them to work together.

“With a common vision and shared philosophical approach, Dr. Morgan and I can infuse the myeloma program with a forward-moving emphasis on utilizing research and technology to benefit patients,” Barlogie said. “By bringing together our collective experience, we will be optimally poised to implement the latest scientific and treatment advances, while maintaining a focus on each individual patient.”

MYELOMA BACKGROUND
Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells, a type of white blood cell normally responsible for producing antibodies. In multiple myeloma, collections of abnormal plasma cells accumulate in the bone marrow, where they interfere with the production of normal blood cells.

Founded in 1989, the myeloma program at UAMS has seen more than 11,000 patients from every state in the U.S. and more than 50 foreign countries and has performed more than 9,000 peripheral blood stem cell transplants.

The work Morgan proposes to develop is already in progress at the Myeloma Institute through the application of commercially available drugs that target unique oncogene mutations.

The expected five-year survival rate for a newly diagnosed myeloma patient treated at the UAMS Myeloma Institute is 74 percent, versus 43 percent for a comparable patient population in the NCI cancer statistics database.

Newly diagnosed patients with genomically defined low-risk disease treated at the Myeloma Institute can expect a median survival exceeding 10 years.