Dr. John Wherry

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Co-Principal Investigator: John Wherry, PhD
Dr. E. John Wherry is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the UPenn Institute for Immunology.  Dr. Wherry received his Ph.D. at Thomas Jefferson University in 2000. Dr. Wherry 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. In October 2012, Dr. Wherry was appointed as Director of the Institute for Immunology (IFI), a Type-2 center at the University of Pennsylvania whose mission is to advance our knowledge of the basic immunology of inflammation, autoimmunity, cancer, transplantation and infection and to translate this new knowledge to novel strategies for diagnosis, prevention and therapeutic intervention.  A major focus of the research in Dr. Wherry's laboratory is to understand the mechanisms and reversibility of T cell exhaustion and dysfunction during chronic infections and to dissect mechanisms of effective T cell immunity to vaccination and infection. The long-term goal of Dr. Wherry’s laboratory is to develop approaches to reinvigorate the immune system in settings where it fails including chronic infections and cancer.