CYTO 2022 Hooke Lecture

Speaker

Dr. E. John Wherry, Ph.D
Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor, Director Institute for Immunology, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Background
Dr. Wherry received his Ph.D. at Thomas Jefferson University in 2000 and performed postdoctoral research at Emory University from 2000-2004. Dr. Wherry has received numerous honors including the Distinguished Alumni award from the Thomas Jefferson University, the Cancer Research Institute’s Frederick W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology, the Stanley N. Cohen Biomedical Research Award from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and was inducted as an AAAS Fellow in 2021. As of November 2021, Dr. Wherry has over 275 publications, an H-Index of 117, and his publications have been cited over 70,000 times.

He helped pioneer the field of T cell exhaustion, the mechanisms by which T cell responses are attenuated during chronic infections and cancer. Dr. Wherry’s work has defined the underlying molecular and epigenetic mechanisms of exhausted T cells. He helped identify the role of the “checkpoint” molecule -1 and others for reinvigoration of exhausted T cells in cancer. These studies have led to new paradigms in immunotherapy for cancer and autoimmune diseases. In 2020-2021, Dr. Wherry’s lab focused considerable effort on the immunology of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 vaccination including establishing a new Immune Health Initiative at Penn to interrogate and identify these features to identify new treatment opportunities.

CMLE Credit: 1.0