John D. Morrey
Research Professor

Research Interests

Publications

 

Dr. Morrey, Director of the Institute, received a Ph.D. in virology at Utah State University in 1983. From 1984 until 1987, he was a Staff Fellow in the Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases, at the NIH Rocky Mountain Laboratories (Hamilton, MT). In this position, he worked on retroviruses that led to future AIDS research. Also during the period of 1981-1984, he founded and ran Physician Services, a clinical diagnostic laboratory. Dr. Morrey joined the Institute for Antiviral Research at Utah State University in 1987, and currently is Research Professor in the Department of Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences and the Biotechnology Center. He has been the PI on four NIH grants and contracts involving NF-kB transcription factor, bioproduction of proteins in transgenic animals, embryonic stems cells, and transgenic mice expressing hepatitis B virus. He also collaborates with Institute investigators on drug discovery for West Nile virus, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies and hepatitis B and C viruses. He teaches "Molecular Cloning" and "Ethics of Biotechnology", from which a book has been authored by Drs. Morrey and Richard Sherlock (Language and Philosophy Department) on this subject (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2002). He has recently been instrumental in the establishment at this university of a transgenic mouse colony expressing hepatitis B virus in the serum and liver, and performing chemotherapy studies to further characterize the utility of this model, has established a transgenic mouse colony for studying inhibitors of prion disease, and has recently developed animal models for study of West Nile virus inhibitors. Dr. Morrey has over 70 scientific papers, primarily in the area of pathogenesis and therapy of murine models of AIDS, hepatitis B and West Nile virus infections. He is Head of the Transgenic Animals Section of the Institute for Antiviral Research.