Founder’s Professorship in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The Professorship was created in 2024 by the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine to provide support for an endowed professorship within the Department. The professorship will be renamed to honor John D. Lambris, PhD, a current faculty member of the Department, upon his retirement.
Dr. Lambris is among the first to characterize the diverse functions of third complement component (C3) and to define its complex binding dynamics to various C3 natural ligands, viral proteins, complement receptors, and regulators. His laboratory contributed in the development of complement-based anti-inflammatory therapeutics through the discovery of the first small-size complement inhibitor, termed Compstatin, which has exhibited consistent efficacy in clinical trials and approved for clinic use. His lab also established an unprecedented association of complement components with non-inflammatory pathways by demonstrating the involvement of complement in the developmental processes, including liver and limb regeneration, hematopoietic development and stem cell engraftment. Dr. Lambris has also contributed in the field of evolutionary immunology by identifying multiple complement genes in fish and the mechanism by which they expand immune recognition and develop a versatile innate immune system to compensate for their weak adaptive immune repertoire.
Dr. Lambris has published over 525 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the editor of several books and special journal issues. He has delivered invited lectures and served as a session chairperson at various national and international scientific conferences, organized workshops, and group discussion sessions. He is the inventor of patents and/or patent applications that describe the use of complement inhibitors for therapeutic purposes. During his long career, Dr. Lambris has received more than $50 million research funding from various institutions and agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), American Cancer Society, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and the European Union (FP7 program).
Current Chairholder
Xiaowei (George) Xu, MD, PhD
Xiaowei (George) Xu, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Dermatology at the Perelman School of Medicine, where he also serves as the Associate Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Xu graduated from Fudan University Shanghai School of Medicine and Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He pursued postdoctoral training in pharmacology with Dr. William Sonntag at Wake Forest University and stem cell biology with Dr. George Cotsarelis at Penn. He completed his residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellowship in Dermatopathology at Harvard Medical School. He is board certified in Clinical and Anatomic Pathology and Dermatopathology. Dr. Xu has been involved in many clinical trials. He has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Web of Science. He has been consistently named among Philadelphia’s Top Doctors.
The Xu Lab is focused on melanoma, skin diseases, and immunotherapy, with a strong emphasis on developing innovative therapeutic strategies. A major focus of his lab:
1) Developing CAR-T cell therapies for melanoma and other solid cancers, particularly utilizing gamma-delta T cells.
2) Engineering extracellular vesicles for cancer therapy, combining these vesicles with antibodies and small molecules to achieve maximal therapeutic efficacy.
3) Developing innovative models using patient-derived organoids and tissue slices to test novel therapeutics and conduct toxicity studies.