Leadership Council
E. John Wherry, PhD
Director, Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Penn
In addition to his role as Director of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Penn, Dr. E. John Wherry is the Director of the Institute for Immunology, Chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, and Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wherry is also co-director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn.
Dr. Wherry’s research is devoted to understanding how the immune system itself can be mobilized by strategic interventions to fight disease, including the diverse array of autoimmune diseases afflicting roughly 24 million Americans. In his role as Director for the Institute of Immunology, Dr. Wherry leads a lab studying the fundamental biology of T cell exhaustion, an immunological change that occurs in chronic infections, cancer, and autoimmunity. A second major focus is to use knowledge of fundamental immune biology to perform high dimensional immune profiling in human diseases including cancer, HIV infection, influenza vaccination, immune cell migration, pediatric respiratory disease, and immunotherapy-induced autoimmunity. The lab’s goal is to use such approaches to define the baseline and disease associated features of overall Immune Health and use this information to interrogate individual responses to therapeutic interventions. Wherry’s work has broad implications for autoimmune health and holds the promise of a future in which autoimmune diseases are defined and treated by precision medicine.
After completing his undergraduate degree at the Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Wherry earned his PhD in Immunology from Thomas Jefferson University and completed his postdoctoral research fellowship at Emory University.
Amit Bar-Or, MD
Director, Center for Neuroinflammation and Neurotherapeutics; Chief, Multiple Sclerosis Division, Neurology
Dr. Amit Bar-Or is the inaugural Melissa and Paul Anderson President’s Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Center for Neuroinflammation and Experimental Therapeutics and serves as Chief of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. Dr. Bar-Or’s clinical focus is multiple sclerosis (MS) and related disorders in both adults and children.
A research and clinical care collaborator with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), he co-directs the CHOP-Penn Age-Span NeuroImmune Program with long-standing collaborator and friend Dr. Brenda Banwell. The program is designed to ensure a seamless transition of care from pediatric to adult care for individuals with MS and related disorders and provide a focus on education and research.
Dr. Bar-Or’s research focuses on neuroimmune health and central nervous system (CNS) inflammatory diseases across the age span, with a particular interest on developing clinically meaningful biomarkers and advancing precision medicine in autoimmune and CNS inflammatory diseases. He runs a cellular and molecular neuroimmunology lab studying principles of immune regulation and immune-neural interaction in the context of injury and repair of the human CNS.
Dr. Bar-Or received his Bsc (Biology and Psychology) from McMaster University in 1988 and his MD from McGill University in 1993.
David Fajgenbaum, MD
Founding Director, Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory
Dr. David Fajgenbaum is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in translational medicine and human genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine, Founding Director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory (CSTL), and Associate Director of Patient Impact at the Penn Orphan Disease Center.
Dr. Fajgenbaum co-founded the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network to accelerate research and treatments for Castleman disease through a "Collaborative Network Approach," a business-inspired approach to biomedical research, which has become a blueprint for advancing rare disease research. He is co-director of the advisory committee for an FDA/NIH/C-Path public-private partnership called the CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory, and lead investigator for a collaboration with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to advance rare disease drug repurposing.
As an NIH-funded physician-scientist, he has dedicated his life to discovering new treatments and cures for deadly disorders like idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD), with which he was diagnosed while in medical school.
Dr. Fajgenbaum received his MD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and his MBA from the Wharton School.
Terri Laufer, MD
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine; Attending Rheumatologist, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Philadelphia VA Medical Center
Dr. Terri Laufer is a leading clinician-scientist in Penn’s Institute for Immunology. Terri is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Attending Rheumatologist for the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and for the Philadelphia VA Medical Center.
Dr. Laufer’s laboratory studies the interactions between CD4+ T cells and MHC class II-positive antigen presenting cells that mediate responses to pathogens and autoimmunity. Her laboratory includes a focus on the development of autoimmunity, including how transfer systems are being utilized to tease apart the T cell and target-organ abnormalities that must be present to initiate an autoimmune disease.
Dr. Laufer received her AB in Biochemistry from Princeton University in 1983 and her MD from Columbia University in 1987. She completed residency training at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York and a fellowship in rheumatology and immunology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Peter A. Merkel, MD, MPH
Chief, Division of Rheumatology
Dr. Merkel is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology. In addition to his leading role as Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at Penn, Dr. Peter A. Merkel is an internationally recognized research and clinical expert in vasculitis and scleroderma, two diseases he has studied for over 20 years, and is an author on over 400 scientific publications. Dr. Merkel’s research focuses on clinical trial design and conduct, outcome measure development, clinical epidemiology, genetic epidemiology, and biomarker discovery. Dr. Merkel founded and directs the Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium, the largest international research network for the study of vasculitis, a family of rare autoimmune diseases. He also conducts substantial research in scleroderma, another rare, multisystem, autoimmune disease, with a focus on outcome measures and clinical trial design. Dr. Merkel is an investigator and member of the oversight committee for the Penn-CHOP Undiagnosed Diseases Network.
Dr. Merkel received his MD from Yale University and his MPH from Harvard University. He completed his residency training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School.
Aimee Payne, MD, PhD
Director of the Clinical Autoimmunity Center OF Excellence
Dr. Aimee Payne is a Professor of Dermatology and Director of the Clinical Autoimmunity Center of Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania. Her clinical practice specializes in autoimmune blistering diseases including pemphigus and pemphigoid. Her laboratory research has investigated B cell repertoires in pemphigus in order to develop precision medicine therapies for disease.
Dr. Payne is co-founder and co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Cabaletta Bio, Inc., a company focused on developing targeted engineered T cell therapies for the treatment of patients with B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, based on foundational technology developed in her laboratory in conjunction with other collaborating laboratories.
At Penn, Dr. Payne also serves as Core Director for the Skin Biology and Diseases Resource-based Center, Associate Director of the Medical Scientist (MD-PhD) Training Program, and faculty advisor for the Association of Women Student MD-PhDs. Outside of Penn, she serves as a member of the Medical Advisory Council of the International Pemphigus and Pemphigoid Foundation, Chair of the NIH/NIAMS Board of Scientific Counselors, and Vice President of the Society for Investigative Dermatology.
Dr. Payne received her BS in Biology from Stanford University and her MD/PhD from Washington University School of Medicine, followed by dermatology residency and fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania.
Marylyn Ritchie, PhD
Director, Institute for Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Ritchie is a pioneering statistical and computational geneticist with a focus on understanding genetic architecture of complex human disease, using big data and complex data analysis and visualization approaches to gain a comprehensive view of genetic and genomic information. She has expertise in developing novel bioinformatics tools for complex analysis of big data in genetics, genomics, and clinical databases, in particular in the area of pharmacogenomics.
Dr. Ritchie joined the Penn faculty in 2017 from the Geisinger Health System, where she was the Chief Research Informatics Officer and Director of Biomedical and Translational Informatics Institute. Before joining Geisinger in 2015, Dr. Ritchie was the Paul Berg Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Ritchie earned a PhD in Statistical Genetics and a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics from Vanderbilt University after receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.