E. John Wherry with Richard and Barbara Schiffrin

E. John Wherry has been named the inaugural Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor. He has led Penn Medicine’s Institute for Immunology since 2012, and he also serves as co-director of the new Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn.

“John is a leading figure in the field of immunology,” said J. Larry Jameson, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and executive vice president for the Health System. “His research tackles the most fundamental challenges in immunology, with the ultimate goal of reinvigorating the immune system in settings where it fails, including chronic infections and cancer.”

The chair was made possible through the generous support of Richard Schiffrin and his wife, Barbara Schiffrin, who are involved in numerous artistic, political and charitable causes, and act as powerful advocates for disease research at Penn Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC). They are also members of the ACC Director’s Leadership Council. 

“Dr. Wherry’s work has implications for treating cancer and autoimmune diseases—conditions that touch so many patients and their families across the globe,” said Mr. Schiffrin. “Barbara and I are proud to be supporting his research, which is so innovative and will lead to novel therapies, if not some cures, for many devastating diseases.”

Dr. Wherry received his PhD at Thomas Jefferson University in 2000, and completed his postdoctoral research at Emory University. He was appointed assistant professor in 2005 in the immunology program at The Wistar Institute, and then joined the department of microbiology in the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in 2010. 

Dr. Wherry was named one of “America’s Young Innovators” by Smithsonian magazine, and received the 2016 Frederick W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute. He has more than 150 publications in top international journals including Nature, Science, Nature Immunology, Immunity and the Journal of Experimental Medicine. 

Dr. Wherry also has received numerous distinctions for his consistent and significant contributions to infectious disease research, and is among the world’s most highly-cited investigators in the field of cancer immunology. In 2014, he was named one of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters, and also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Thomas Jefferson University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.