Charles G. Mullighan

Charles G. Mullighan, MBBS(Hons), MD, PhD is Deputy Director of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and a world-leading authority on the genomic landscape of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Born in Australia and trained at the University of Melbourne before joining St. Jude, Dr. Mullighan has been the defining force in understanding how genetic alterations drive ALL pathogenesis and how genomic subtypes should guide therapy. His foundational 2007 and 2009 Nature papers established that deletion of IKZF1 (encoding the Ikaros transcription factor) is a hallmark of BCR-ABL1-positive and BCR-ABL1-like ALL and a critical determinant of poor prognosis. He co-led the international effort to comprehensively characterize Ph-like ALL, identifying the full spectrum of kinase-activating alterations (CRLF2/JAK pathway, ABL-class fusions, RAS pathway mutations) and demonstrating this subtype comprises approximately 15% of pediatric B-ALL and up to 25-30% of adults. Dr. Mullighan's group has also defined the genomic features of B-ALL in children with Down syndrome, characterizing the unique biology of DS-ALL and elucidating why these patients are both highly sensitive to chemotherapy and at risk for treatment-related toxicities. His work integrating genomic data with clinical outcomes has reshaped ALL risk classification and directly enabled precision medicine trials.