Christopher Michael Morrison

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Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Chapters

• Morrison, C. (2018). Osteosarcoma. In Radiation Oncology: A Question-Based Review. Wolters Kluwer.

Journals/Publications

• Morrison, C. (2025). Getting Cheeky With It: Adult Rhabdomyosarcoma. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. doi:Doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2024.10.015
• Morrison, C. (2024). Gene Expression Patterns Associated with Survival in Glioblastoma. Int. J. Mol. Sci., 25(3668). doi:https://doi.org/ 10.3390/ijms25073668
• Morrison, C. (2024). Like a Glove: Dose Dependent MR Signal Changes Following Liver SBRT in the Setting of Hemochromatosis. Pract Radiat Oncol. doi:Doi: 10.1016/j.prro.2024.04.005
• Morrison, C., Weterings, E., Gravbrot, N., Hammer, M., Weinand, M., Sanan, A., Pandey, R., Mahadevan, D., & Stea, B. (2024). Gene Expression Patterns Associated with Survival in Glioblastoma. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 25(7), 3668. doi:10.3390/ijms25073668
• Morrison, C. (2023). Personalized precision radiotherapy and its evolving role for human papillomavirus-positive oropharyngeal cancer. Journal of the National Cancer Center, 3(1), 72-82. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jncc.2022.11.006
• Morrison, C., Weterings, E., Mahadevan, D., Sanan, A., Weinand, M., & Stea, B. (2021). Expression Levels of RAD51 Inversely Correlate with Survival of Glioblastoma Patients. Cancers, 13(21).
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  Treatment failures of glioblastoma (GBM) occur within high-dose radiation fields. We hypothesized that this is due to increased capacity for DNA damage repair in GBM. We identified 24 adult GBM patients treated with maximal safe resection followed by radiation with concurrent and adjuvant temozolomide. The mRNA from patients was quantified using NanoString Technologies' nCounter platform and compared with 12 non-neoplastic temporal lobe tissue samples as a control. Differential expression analysis identified seven DNA repair genes significantly upregulated in GBM tissues relative to controls (>4-fold difference, adjusted values < 0.001). Among these seven genes, Cox proportional hazards models identified RAD51 to be associated with an increased risk of death (HR = 3.49; = 0.03). Kaplan-Meier (KM) analysis showed that patients with high RAD51 expression had significantly shorter OS compared to low levels (median OS of 10.6 mo. vs 20.1 mo.; log-rank = 0.03). Our findings were validated in a larger external dataset of 162 patients using publicly available gene expression data quantified by the same NanoString technology (median OS of 13.8 mo. vs. 17.4 mo; log-rank = 0.006). Within this uniformly treated GBM population, RAD51, in the homologous recombination pathway, was overexpressed (vs. normal brain) and inversely correlated with OS. High RAD51 expression may be a prognostic biomarker and a therapeutic target in GBM.
• Gravbrot, N., Morrison, C. M., Stea, B., Weinand, M. E., & Weterings, E. (2019). Increased Expression of DNA Repair Gene RAD51 Associated with Shorter Overall Survival in Glioblastoma. International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics. doi:10.1016/j.ijrobp.2019.06.213
• Mahadevan, D., Hammer, M., Morrison, C., Weterings, E., Gravbrot, N., & Stea, B. (2018). RTHP-09. DYSREGULATION OF Wnt SIGNALING PATHWAY CORRELATES WITH TREATMENT OUTCOME IN GLIOBLASTOMA MULTIFORME. Neuro-Oncology, 20(suppl_6), vi227-vi227. doi:10.1093/neuonc/noy148.941
• Sandweiss, A. J., Morrison, C. M., Spichler, A., & Rozich, J. (2018). A case report of clonidine induced syncope: a review of central actions of an old cardiovascular drug. BMC pharmacology & toxicology, 19(1), 6.
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  Clonidine is an imidazoline sympatholytic, acting on both α-adrenergic and imidazoline receptors in the brainstem to induce antihypertensive and negative chronotropic effects in the vasculature and heart respectively.
• Goyal, U., Prabhakar, N. K., Davuluri, R., Morrison, C. M., & Yi, S. K. (2017). Role of Concurrent Systemic Therapy with Adjuvant Radiation Therapy for Locally Advanced Cutaneous Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Cureus, 9(10), e1784.
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  Objective To evaluate the role of concurrent systemic therapy to postoperative radiation therapy (RT) for locally advanced cutaneous head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (LA-cHNSCC). Materials and methods A retrospective study of 32 patients with LA-cHNSCC receiving postoperative RT with and without systemic therapy was conducted. Patients with LA-cHNSCC after surgical resection with one or more high risk features were evaluated. Local regional control (LRC), distant control (DC), and acute and late toxicities were evaluated with Fisher exact tests. Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were evaluated utilizing Kaplan Meier and log-rank analyses. Univariate Cox proportional hazard analyses were used to examine patient, disease, and treatment-related factors with OS and PFS. Results While comparing patients receiving RT with systemic therapy (n = 14) vs RT alone (n = 18), LRC was 92.9% vs 72.2% (p = 0.20), DC 92.9% vs 94.4% (p = 1.0), median PFS 17.7 months vs 34.4 months (p = 0.48), and median OS 20.9 months vs 34.4 months (p = 0.03), respectively. On univariate analyses, use of concurrent systemic therapy was associated with an increased risk of death with an HR of 3.5 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04 - 11.6] (p = 0.04), while patients treated for recurrent disease who had previously treated superficial primaries had improved OS with an HR of 0.10 [95% CI: 0.01-0.80] (p = 0.03). There were no significant differences in acute or chronic toxicities between groups. Conclusions Patients receiving postoperative RT alone for LA-cHNSCC had better OS than patients receiving concurrent systemic therapy. There were no differences in any other endpoints evaluated.
• Slane, B. G., Goyal, U., Grow, J. L., Morrison, C., Hullett, C. R., Gordon, J., Sanan, A., & Stea, B. (2017). Radiotherapeutic management of vestibular schwannomas using size- and location-adapted fractionation regimens to maximize the therapeutic ratio. Practical radiation oncology, 7(3), e233-e241.
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  We evaluated and compared the radiographic and clinical outcomes of patients with vestibular schwannomas treated with single fraction stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), 5 fractions of hypofractionated stereotactic radiation therapy (hSRT), or 25 to 30 fractions of conventionally fractionated stereotactic radiation therapy (cfSRT).
• Dial, S. M., Morrison, C. M., Day, W. A., & Joens, L. A. (2012). Investigations of Salmonella enterica Serovar Newport Infections of Oysters by Using Immunohistochemistry and Knockout Mutagenesis. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 78(8), 2867-2873. doi:10.1128/aem.07456-11
• Morrison, C. M., Dial, S. M., Day, W. A., & Joens, L. A. (2012). Investigations of Salmonella enterica serovar newport infections of oysters by using immunohistochemistry and knockout mutagenesis. Applied and environmental microbiology, 78(8), 2867-73.
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  The consumption of raw oysters is an important risk factor in the acquisition of food-borne disease, with Salmonella being one of a number of pathogens that have been found in market oysters. Previous work by our lab found that Salmonella was capable of surviving in oysters for over 2 months under laboratory conditions, and this study sought to further investigate Salmonella's tissue affinity and mechanism of persistence within the oysters. Immunohistochemistry was used to show that Salmonella was capable of breaching the epithelial barriers, infecting the deeper connective tissues of the oysters, and evading destruction by the oysters' phagocytic hemocytes. To further investigate the mechanism of these infections, genes vital to the function of Salmonella's two main type III secretion systems were disrupted and the survivability of these knockout mutants within oysters was assayed. When the Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 and 2 mutant strains were exposed to oysters, there were no detectable deficiencies in their abilities to survive, suggesting that Salmonella's long-term infection of oysters does not rely upon these two important pathogenicity islands and must be due to some other, currently unknown, mechanism.
• Morrison, C. M., Armstrong, A. E., Evans, S., Mild, R. M., Langdon, C. J., & Joens, L. A. (2011). Survival of Salmonella Newport in oysters. International journal of food microbiology, 148(2), 93-8.
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  Salmonella enterica is the leading cause of laboratory-confirmed foodborne illness in the United States and raw shellfish consumption is a commonly implicated source of gastrointestinal pathogens. A 2005 epidemiological study done in our laboratory by Brands et al., showed that oysters in the United States are contaminated with Salmonella, and in particular, a specific strain of the Newport serovar. This work sought to further investigate the host-microbe interactions between Salmonella Newport and oysters. A procedure was developed to reliably and repeatedly expose oysters to enteric bacteria and quantify the subsequent levels of bacterial survival. The results show that 10 days after an exposure to Salmonella Newport, an average concentration of 3.7 × 10(3)CFU/g remains within the oyster meat, and even after 60 days there still can be more than 10(2)CFU/g remaining. However, the strain of Newport that predominated in the market survey done by Brands et al. does not survive within oysters or the estuarine environment better than any other strains of Salmonella we tested. Using this same methodology, we compared Salmonella Newport's ability to survive within oysters to a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli and found that after 10 days the concentration of Salmonella was 200-times greater than that of E. coli. We also compared those same strains of Salmonella and E. coli in a depuration process to determine if a constant 120 L/h flux of clean seawater could significantly reduce the concentration of bacteria within oysters and found that after 3 days the oysters retained over 10(4)CFU/g of Salmonella while the oysters exposed to the non-pathogenic strain of E. coli contained 100-times less bacteria. Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that any of the clinically relevant serovars of Salmonella can survive within oysters for significant periods of time after just one exposure event. Based on the drastic differences in survivability between Salmonella and a non-pathogenic relative, the results of this study also suggest that unidentified virulence factors may play a role in Salmonella's interactions with oysters.

Presentations

• Morrison, C. (2019, September). Increased expression of DNA repair gene RAD51 associated with shorter overall survival in glioblastoma. Annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Chicago, IL.

Poster Presentations

• Morrison, C. (2024, Oct). NCDB Analysis of Low-Risk HPV-Related H&N SCC of the Oropharynx Treated with Surgery: Can Adjuvant RT be Safely Omitted in Node Positive Patients?. ASTRO Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.: ASTRO.
• Morrison, C. (2024, Oct). Prognostic Indicators of Patients with Recurrent Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Undergoing Reirradiation. AAO-NHSF Annual Meeting. Miami, FL.
• Morrison, C. (2023, October). Outcomes of a Single Isocenter Brain Multi-Metastases Linear Accelerator Delivered Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS). ASTRO Annual Meeting. San DIego, CA: ASTRO.
• Morrison, C. (2018, November). Dysregulation of Wnt Signaling Pathway Correlates with Treatment Outcome in Glioblastoma. Annual meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO). New Orleans, LA.
• Morrison, C. (2018, October). Intraoperative Radiation Therapy (IORT) As Sole RT Modality for Breast Cancer:Patterns of Care in the United States Before and After Publication of Guidelines and Randomized Trials. Annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). San Antonio, TX.
• Morrison, C. (2016, September). Neoadjuvant Chemoradiation with Ifosfamide and Etoposide in the Management of Soft Tissue Sarcomas: a Single Institution Review. Annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Boston, MA.
• Morrison, C. (2013, March). Automated Dual Color Kappa/Lambda mRNA In Situ Hybridization for Detection of Monoclonality. Annual meeting of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. Baltimore, MD.