Professor Morris Brown
Professor of Endocrine Hypertension
Centre: Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine
Email: morris.brown@qmul.ac.uk Telephone: +44(0) 20 7882 3901
Profile
- Qualified in Classics and Medicine from Cambridge in 1974.
- Trained in Clinical Pharmacology at Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith, MRC Senior Fellow 1982-1985.
- Foundation Chair of Clinical Pharmacology, Cambridge, 1985-2016.
- Director of Wellcome Trust Translational Medicine and Therapeutics training programme, 2008-2016.
Memberships and awards
Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the American Heart Association, the British Pharmacological Society.
- 1985 Raymond Horton-Smith Prize (Cambridge MD Prize)
- 2002 Lilly Prize, British Pharmacological Society
- 2003 Hospital Doctor of the Year 2003
- 2005 Walter Somerville Medal, British Cardiac Society
- 2014 Pickering Lecturer, British Hypertension Society
- 2016 Royal College of Physicians/Lancet Research Award (for ‘outstanding research contributing to excellent patient care’)
Research
Group members
- Jackie Salsbury (Clinical trials co-ordinator)
- Dr Elena Azizan (Royal Society Newton post-doc Fellow)
- Dr Junhua Zhou (post-doc)
- Dr Xilin Wu (NIHR Clinical PhD Fellow)
- Dr Emily Goodchild (BTLC Clinical PhD fellow)
- Sumedha Garg (visiting BHF PhD student)
Summary
My research, laboratory and clinical, has sought to discover causes of hypertension, and to optimise its management either by achieving complete cure, e.g. by removal of a hormone-producing adrenal tumour (phaeochromocytoma, Conn's), or by finding the right drug for the right patient. In 1999, I proposed the AB/CD rule, relating choice of treatment to patient's age and plasma renin. As President of the British Hypertension Society 2005-7 I established a research network that won funding from the British Heart Foundation to conduct a series of clinical trials, the 'PATHWAY' programme establishing optimal treatment for different categories of Hypertension. These have been published in Lancet or American journals. My current research is mainly focussed on the adrenal gland, and the small aldosterone-producing adenomas which are a common cause of hypertension – unrecognised in 99% of cases. We discovered a sub-type of these with hallmark somatic mutations, often presenting with resistant hypertension. There diagnosis has been facilitated by development of a PET CT (using 11C-metomidate) that lights up even the tiniest (4-5 mm) nodules, often in patients whose conventional CT of the adrenals was normal. In an NIHR project, we are comparing our PET CT with the invasive test of adrenal vein sampling, for their accuracy in predicting cure of hypertension by adrenalectomy. In a BHF-funded project, we are evaluating a less invasive alternative to surgery, namely ultrasound guided endoscopic radiofrequency ablation of the adenoma.
Publications
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Watson A, Syme H, Brown M (2024). Somatic GNAQ, CTNNB1, and CACNA1C Mutations in Cat Aldosterone-Secreting Tumors. nameOfConference
QMRO: qmroHref -
Aminuddin A, Brown MJ, Azizan EA (publicationYear). Evaluating the role of aldosterone synthesis on adrenal cell fate. nameOfConference
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Silins I, Moreno A, Wall A et al. (publicationYear). Radiation dosimetry of para-chloro-2-[18F]fluoroethyl-etomidate: a PET tracer for adrenocortical imaging. nameOfConference
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Bohoran TA, Parke KS, Graham-Brown MPM et al. (publicationYear). Resource efficient aortic distensibility calculation by end to end spatiotemporal learning of aortic lumen from multicentre multivendor multidisease CMR images. nameOfConference
QMRO: qmroHref -
Lagou V, Jiang L, Ulrich A et al. (2023). GWAS of random glucose in 476,326 individuals provide insights into diabetes pathophysiology, complications and treatment stratification. nameOfConference
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Azizan EAB, Drake WM, Brown MJ (2023). Primary aldosteronism: molecular medicine meets public health. nameOfConference
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Wu X, Azizan EAB, Goodchild E et al. (2023). Somatic mutations of CADM1 in aldosterone-producing adenomas and gap junction-dependent regulation of aldosterone production. nameOfConference
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Kida Y (2023). Baxdrostat for Treatment-Resistant Hypertension. nameOfConference
DOI: 10.1056/nejmc2302673
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Wu X, Senanayake R, Goodchild E et al. (2023). [11C]metomidate PET-CT versus adrenal vein sampling for diagnosing surgically curable primary aldosteronism: a prospective, within-patient trial. nameOfConference
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MacDonald TM, Mackenzie IS, Rogers A et al. (2023). S-28-1: CARDIOVASCULAR OUTCOMES IN ADULTS WITH HYPERTENSION WITH EVENING VERSUS MORNING DOSING OF USUAL ANTIHYPERTENSIVES IN THE UK. THE TIME STUDY. nameOfConference
Collaborators
Internal
- Prof William Drake (QMUL/Barts)
- Dr Chaz Mein (QMUL)
- Professor Panos Deloukas (QMUL)
External
- Ms Laila Parvanta (Barts)
- Prof Annette Dolphin (UCL)
- Prof Stephen Pereira (UCL)
- Prof Erik Arstad (UCL)
- Dr Mark Gurnell (Cambridge)
- Dr HK Cheow (Cambridge)
BHF PATHWAY Investigators
- Prof Bryan Williams (UCL)
- Prof Tom Macdonald (Dundee)
- Prof Kennedy Cruickshank (KCL)
- Prof Philip Chowienczyk (KCL)
- Dr Steve Morant (Dundee)
- Prof Joerg Striessnig (Innsbruck)
- Prof Felix Beuschlein (Munich)
- Prof Akihiko Ito (Kindai, Japan)
- Dr Celso Gomez Sanchez (Mississippi)
News
- BBC Radio 4: Inside Health - interview - 4 February 2016
- British Heart Foundation Film about the metomidate PET CT
Teaching
- PhD supervision
- Lectures to MRes courses