Jeffrey Magee, MD, PhD, is the Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell Professor in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He also directs the Pediatric Leukemia and Lymphoma Program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. In these capacities, he oversees both basic and clinical research, patient care and biomedical education.
Magee grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, where he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an undergraduate. While at UW, he conducted research in the laboratory of Sean Carroll. His work focused on understanding how body patterns are established during animal development and how they change through the course of animal evolution. He contributed to two papers, including a Nature article.
He then moved to St. Louis and trained as an MD/PhD student at Washington University School of Medicine. Magee conducted his thesis work with Jeffrey Milbrandt and published several first author papers, including a seminal paper in Cancer Cell that described how haploinsufficiency at tumor suppressor loci can convey fully penetrant changes in cell identity at the level of individual cells. He received several awards for his research, including the prestigious Olin Medical Science Fellowship and the David M. Kipnis award.
After completing his MD/PhD, Magee moved to the University of Michigan for his pediatrics residency and pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship. He conducted his postdoctoral training with Sean Morrison, initially at the University of Michigan and then at UT-Southwestern Medical Center. Magee published multiple papers, including a Cell Stem Cell paper that described age-specific consequences of leukemogenic PTEN mutations. This research formed the basis for his independent career, which has focused heavily on childhood-specific mechanisms of leukemia initiation and progression.
Magee joined the Washington University faculty in 2013 and has been incredibly productive, both from a publications and funding standpoint. He has published seminal papers on mechanisms underlying hematopoietic stem cell ontogeny and their effects on leukemia initiation. He has successfully mentored several graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He has chaired the Scientific Committee on Myeloid Biology for the American Society of Hematology, and he sits on the Myeloid Biology steering committee for the Children’s Oncology Group — a cooperative group that oversees clinical trials nationally and internationally. He is also a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigators.
Magee met his wife, Carrie, at the University of Wisconsin. They have four children: Erica, Alex, Patrick and Charlotte. Whenever possible, they seek out backcountry adventures, particularly across the lakes of Northern Minnesota.
About Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III
Longtime philanthropists and civic leaders Elizabeth and James McDonnell have continued to show their dedication to pediatric cancer with the establishment of the Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Professor in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.
James S. McDonnell III graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering and then earned a master’s degree in the same field from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career in 1963 as an aerodynamics engineer at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the St. Louis firm his father founded in 1939 which later became McDonnell Douglas Corporation. He held several managerial and executive positions at the corporation and served as a vice president from 1973 until his retirement in 1991. He was a director of the corporation until its merger with the Boeing Co. in 1997.
Apart from business, James is an avid philanthropist. Currently, he is involved in many local organizations. He is a lifetime trustee of St. Louis Children’s Hospital, a member of the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Foundation Board of Trustees, a member of the Board of Managers of the Children’s Discovery Institute and a member of the James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF) Board of Directors. Elizabeth McDonnell serves as an emerita trustee of Hollins University, her alma mater, and is a lifetime member of the Washington University Women’s Society.
Over the years, the McDonnells have provided hope to children and their families with generous support for pediatric research and treatment. They established the McDonnell Pediatric Cancer Center in 2023 as part of the Children’s Discovery Institute. A deeper understanding of how cancers emerge and develop and how those processes can be stopped will accelerate breakthroughs that give kids and families hope. The McDonnells are dedicated to childhood cancer as their daughter Peggy died of cancer in 1972, at age 2.