E. John Wherry

E. John Wherry is Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor, and Director, Institute for Immunology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Wherry’s expertise focuses on T cell exhaustion in chronic infections and cancer and on the mechanisms by which immunoregulatory “checkpoint” pathways such as PD-1 control T cell exhaustion. His work has defined the molecular mechanisms of T cell exhaustion, including defining the role of inhibitory receptor biology, transcriptional control, and regulation of T cell differentiation.

In 2020-2021, Wherry’s laboratory focused considerable efforts on the immunology of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 vaccination including establishing a new Immune Health Project to interrogate and use immune features to identify novel treatment opportunities. Wherry received his Ph.D. at Thomas Jefferson University and did postdoctoral research at Emory University with Rafi Ahmed. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Council of the Cancer Research Institute.