Professor Dedee Murrell has become the first Australian to receive the MDS award.
Renowned Australian dermatologist Professor Dedee Murrell has been honoured with one of the most prestigious international accolades in the field of dermatology.
The Sydney-based dermatologist, who is Professor and Chair of the Department of Dermatology, St George Hospital, University of NSW, received the Medical Dermatology Society’s (MDS) 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the first Australian to receive the award.
The award was presented at the end of the society’s annual meeting, held the day before the American Academy of Dermatology congress in San Diego at the Marriott Marquis, co-located at the San Diego Convention Centre.
Each year, the award celebrates individuals who have demonstrated a “lifetime of inspired patient care as a medical dermatologist, mentoring of future medical dermatologists, and research to advance medical dermatology.” With only one recipient each year worldwide, the award is the society’s most prestigious.
Speaking to HSD‘s sister publication Dermatology Republic while waiting for a plane to take her to San Diego to receive the award last month, Professor Murrell said it was a huge honour.
“This one is, I think, the most prestigious one that I’ve received, it’s international,” she said.
“Second, it’s at the American Academy of Dermatology, which is the most highly attended meeting in our specialty. And it’s within medical dermatology, the serious end of the specialty.”
Professor Murrell said she had been a member of the society for about 20 years and rarely missed an annual meeting.
She paid tribute to the “famous professors” who have also received the award in previous years.
“Some of them have been my mentors,” she said.
“I never thought that it would be me. There are only one or two women who have received it before, so I was just flabbergasted when I found out. I was thrilled to bits, of course.”
Professor Murrell said she also wanted to recognise her mentors in medicine and dermatology at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, NYU and Rockefeller Universities as well as supportive colleagues in Australia and abroad.
The MDS focuses on research and education to improve the treatment of important skin diseases, including severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs-DRESS, SJS/TEN), blistering diseases, lupus, scleroderma, vasculitis, pyoderma, hidradenitis, advanced and metastatic skin cancers.
Professor Murrell has received many honours and awards including the International Pioneer Award from the Women’s Dermatology Society and Everett C Fox Award from the American Academy of Dermatology. In addition, she has served in an assortment of important leadership positions in dermatology organisations in Australia and throughout the world.
Her career has focused on blistering diseases, both autoimmune and genetic, following her education at Cambridge and Oxford Universities; three years of internal medicine, dermatology residency and research on EBA at UNC-Chapel Hill; and research fellowships in dermatopharmacology at Duke University, cell biology at New York University and epidermolysis bullosa at Rockefeller.
She has published more than 400 scientific articles and six textbooks, including as co-editor of Treatment of Skin Diseases and Blistering Diseases. She established Australia’s first dedicated dermatology clinical trials centre, a multidisciplinary clinic for EB and an international medical dermatology fellowship.
Together with Dr Victoria Werth, she cofounded the International Blistering Diseases Consensus Group and pioneered the development and validation of the scores used in pemphigus (PDAI) and pemphigoid (BPDAI). She is an honorary international member of the American Dermatologic Association.
One of Professor Murrell’s biggest contributions to dermatology has been in pioneering the development of standard disease definitions and outcome measures for blistering skin diseases.
“In order to get new treatments approved for skin diseases, you have to have a way of defining the stages of the disease and scoring the patients,” she said.
“You can’t do a sponsored clinical trial unless you have validated scores that say how severe the skin disease is. No one had done any of that work for blistering skin diseases, whereas it had gone ahead for psoriasis, eczema and many common skin diseases.”
Professor Murrell is also committed to mentoring emerging medical dermatologists from around the world and encouraging them to get more involved in research.
“I love mentoring young people and so I belong to a lot of these international societies that offer mentorships and encourage young people to get experience doing research,” she said.
“I do my best to try to inspire potential dermatologists to get involved in research to make a difference.”