Department of Pathology

In alignment with our institution’s mission to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment, the Department of Pathology is dedicated to providing outstanding clinical care through the excellence of its diagnostic services, creating knowledge through its clinical research and laboratory-based science, and promoting educational and professional opportunities for its staff and other health care professionals.

Pathology’s faculty and staff offer outstanding clinical care through our diagnostic services and make critical discoveries in our research labs. We strive to provide the most advanced clinical tests to enable rapid and comprehensive diagnostic results for our patients. We were the first pathology department in the world to provide comprehensive whole genome, whole exome and transcriptome sequencing of cancer samples in an integrated diagnostic platform. This and other novel tests have enabled St. Jude physicians to devise cutting-edge clinical trials to improve cure rates for childhood catastrophic diseases.

The department has five divisions — three clinical and two research — which are each directed by one of our senior faculty members. Our clinical faculty are experts in their specialized fields and provide opinions to pathology colleagues nationwide and globally through our Global Pathology program. On the laboratory research side of the department, our scientists make impactful discoveries to advance our understanding of childhood cancer or suggest new diagnostic or therapeutic approaches for the childhood catastrophic diseases that are the focus of St. Jude. Our faculty are institutional leaders, directing the Centers for Excellence in Leukemia Studies and shared resources, including the Biorepository, the Comparative Pathology Core and Clinical Biomarkers Laboratory.

Faculty and staff across the department teach pathology residents from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, hematology-oncology fellows at St. Jude, and many trainee pathologists and medical lab scientists from across the United States. Our faculty and staff engage in teaching for the St. Jude Global program and welcome trainees from around the world. We also provide educational opportunities for our own Pathology staff.

I hope that this information inspires you to discover more about the role of pathology in medicine, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and my department.

David Ellison, MBBChir, MA, MSc, MD, PhD