John Wherry, Ph.D.

E. John Wherry, Ph.D., is the Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor, chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, and director of the Penn Institute for Immunology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn, as well as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Surface Oncology. His research has focused on T cell exhaustion in chronic viral infections and cancer. His work has defined the developmental biology and molecular regulation of T cell exhaustion, role of checkpoints including PD-1, LAG-3 and others and significantly informed the development of immunotherapies for human cancer. John received his doctorate degree in immunology from Thomas Jefferson University and did postdoctoral training at Emory University.