In Memoriam: Dr. Barbara Murray
Barbara E. Murray, MD, J. Ralph Meadows Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, died April 11, 2024. She was 76.
A member of the Medical School’s ID faculty since 1980, she was a former director of the division and an internationally recognized expert in antibiotic resistance, enterococci and enterococcal infections, and bacterial pathogenesis.
“She was the definition of a trailblazer,” said Luis Ostrosky, MD, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Memorial Hermann Chair. “She was an amazing, kind, and generous mentor to countless generations of microbiologists and infectious diseases physicians. Her academic curiosity, her sense for justice, her quest for adventure, and her legacy, will live on through the lives and careers of all her trainees and colleagues.”
Murray experienced the effect of infectious disease firsthand when she was hospitalized for polio at the age of 4. She grew up in an academic environment, watching her father work as a professor of engineering in Texas. She graduated cum laude with a degree in mathematics in 1969 from Rice University and graduated first in her class from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 1973. As a medical student, she traveled to Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Colombia, where she saw that clinicians spent a considerable amount of their time treating transmissible diseases. She trained for 6 years in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, followed by 6 months in Thailand conducting research at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences.
She joined the Medical School faculty as an assistant professor of infectious diseases in 1980, was named director of the division in 1995, and selected as the holder of the J. Ralph Meadows Professorship in Internal Medicine in 2003. During her time at UTHealth, she was heavily involved in research, conducting National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded basic and translational research in the areas of antibiotic resistance, enterococcal infections, and bacterial pathogenesis. She earned a prestigious 10-year MERIT award through NIH, and her research resulted in approximately 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals, as well as countless reviews and editorials. She was the world’s definitive expert on enterococci and Staphylococcus aureus, regularly authoring those chapters for UpToDate, Harrison’s Textbook of Internal Medicine, and Mandell’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases.
“Infectious disease research at McGovern and throughout the TMC is so very strong, and Barbara was its foundation. Her passing is a profound loss for our community,” said Michael Lorenz, PhD, chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and the Herbert L. and Margaret W. DuPont Chair in Biomedical Sciences.
“I first came to know of Dr. Murray while I was still a post-doctoral fellow at MGH/Harvard Medical School in Boston,” remembered Danielle Garsin, PhD, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. “I was working to develop Caenorhabditis elegans as a model host to study bacterial infection and having good results using the human bacterial pathogen Enterococcus faecalis. Dr. Murray was one of just a few investigators focusing on this pathogen at the time, and I contacted her about obtaining strains to test in my model. She very generously sent me the requested strains, plus a few unpublished ones. The study was ultimately successful, and resulted in what I believe is my most cited publication. It was also the first of 12 co-authored publications with Dr. Murray.
“Serendipitously, a couple of years later, I ended up interviewing and ultimately accepting a faculty position at UTHealth Houston in the MMG department. It did not escape my attention that Dr. Murray was here as chief of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine. And fortunately for me – a very green assistant professor – Barbara became a mentor, a sponsor, and a big source of inspiration. She took me under her wing and helped integrate me into the research community of the Texas Medical Center, which included becoming involved with one of the first E. faecalis genome annotation projects. Long after my early years, I continued to fruitfully collaborate with Dr. Murray. For example, Dr. Murray contributed access to her many Enterococcus clinical isolates, which were useful to some of our studies. Additionally, her lab also provided long-standing expertise on different animal models of Enterococcus infection. I am very grateful for Dr. Murray’s support as a colleague in the McGovern Medical School and as a colleague in the field. She will be missed!
“In addition to our shared interest in all things Enterococcus, Dr. Murray and I bonded over our love of running. Here, she was also an inspiration. She was a frequent participant in the Chevron Houston Half-Marathon and Marathon, and a regular runner up until her final illness. I hope to follow in Dr. Murray’s footsteps and keep on running well into my older years.”
A staunch defender of academic freedom, Murray served on numerous NIH committees, DSMBs and study sections, including past chair of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee and the FDA’s Anti-Infectives Advisory Committee. She served as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, to the European Food Safety Authority and to the EU’s Innovative Medicine’s Initiative. She was very active in professional societies, including serving on the Program Planning Committee of the American Society of Microbiology’s ICAAC meeting for 9 years and as the chair for 3 years; as an editor of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal published by the American Society of Microbiology (10-year term); on the Program Committee of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID); and she was a past secretary, treasurer, president and foundation president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. In 2017, she received the IDSA Alexander Fleming Award for lifetime achievement.
To honor her illustrious career, UTHealth Houston established the Barbara E. Murray, MD Distinguished Professorship in Internal Medicine Research. A special grand rounds lecture by the recipient, followed by a reception to celebrate Murray’s life, will be held noon – 3 p.m., June 27, 2024, at McGovern Medical School. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts be made to UTHealth Houston, PO Box 20268, Houston, TX 77025-9998 or giving.uth.edu/memorial