Raphael J. Morscher
Attending physician in pediatric oncology
Organization
University Children's Hospital Zurich
About Raphael J. Morscher
Raphael J. Morscher is an attending physician in pediatric oncology at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich and group leader in Pediatric Cancer Metabolism at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is co-leading the project Deciphering Dynamic Systems in Childhood.
Morscher earned an MD in 2012 and a PhD in molecular medicine in 2017 from Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria. For his MD research on amino acid metabolism, he joined Matthias Baumgartner’s lab at the University of Zurich. He conducted his doctoral research with Barbara Kofler in Salzburg and Joshua Rabinowitz at Princeton University in the US. From 2016 to 2017, he continued as a postdoctoral research fellow in Rabinowitz’s laboratory at Princeton’s Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, studying the crosstalk of folate metabolism with protein translation. He then moved to the University Children’s Hospital Zurich, where he completed his pediatrics residency in 2020 and fellowships in pediatric oncology in Zurich and at Institut Gustave Roussy in Paris, France. He has been an attending physician in pediatric oncology since 2024 and leads an independent research group at the Children’s Research Center at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich.
Research focus
Morscher and his team study how metabolism dictates cell identity in childhood cancers. A particular focus is the crosstalk of metabolic state and protein translation. The group recently showed that depleting polyamines reprograms protein translation in neuroblastoma, driving aggressive tumor cells to mature into neuron-like cells — a study featured on the cover of Nature. His current research extends these insights to metabolic depletion therapies for children’s cancers and toward a dynamic understanding of life-threatening childhood disease across scales.
Awards and recognition
Among numerous distinctions, Morscher was awarded the Promotio sub auspiciis Praesidentis rei publicae — the highest honor for academic performance in Austria — for his PhD in 2017. He received the 2018 SGP/SSP Talent Prize, is a 2025 EMBO Young Investigator, and was appointed INSERM Chair in Pediatric Oncology in 2025. In addition, Morscher was awarded a Professor Dr. Max Cloëtta research position in 2025, the 2026 FIGHT KIDS CANCER & St. Baldrick’s Foundation Arceci Innovation Award, and the 2026 Georg Friedrich Götz Prize.
Raphael Morscher photo by Barbora Prekopová / Kinderspital Zürich
‘s projects
Deciphering Dynamic Systems in Childhood
Childhood is one of the most dynamic phases of human life: a period of rapid growth and development that sets the trajectory for lifelong health. When serious illnesses such as sepsis, rare metabolic disorders or childhood cancers strike early in life, they disrupt these dynamics. Yet in current practice, diseases are primarily described with static snapshots: blood tests, scans, or labels captured at certain time points used in historic taxonomies of disease. This frames disease as a fixed deviation from health, rather than a shifting imbalance. The Deciphering Dynamic Systems in Childhood project investigates childhood disease as a dynamic process from a molecular perspective.
NOMIS researchers
Project period
2026 – 2029
‘s news
October 20, 2025
Targeted diet enhances effects of new childhood cancer therapy
How can a diet and drug combination starve malignant nervous system tumors? A research team from the University of Zurich and the University Children’s Hospital Zurich may have the answer. By combining an approved drug with a specialized diet, they were able to slow down tumor growth and stimulate cancer cells to mature into normal […]
