The Peter C. Nowell, MD Professorship
Established in 2015 by faculty and many long-time supporters of the Abramson Cancer Center, the chair honors the late Professor Emeritus Peter C. Nowell, MD, the groundbreaking physician-scientist and first Director of the Abramson Cancer Center. With his demonstration of the genetic basis for cancer, Dr. Nowell laid the foundation for targeted therapies that have transformed cancer care.
A 1952 graduate of the Perelman School of Medicine, Dr. Nowell joined the faculty of the School in 1956. In 1960, he and his research partner, the late David Hungerford, discovered the Philadelphia chromosome, an abnormally small chromosome in the cancerous white blood cells of patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).
Their revolutionary work was the basis for clinical trials for Gleevec®, the Novartis Pharmaceuticals drug that received FDA approval in 2001 and has since stabilized disease in 95% of treated CML patients. Gleevec® is now approved to treat 10+ different types of cancer.
Dr. Nowell served as Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine from 1967 to 1973 and as the first Director of the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center, now known as the Abramson Cancer Center. He was named the Gaylord P. and Mary Louise Harnwell Professor in 1990, a position he held until his retirement in 2006.
Nowell died Dec. 26, 2016 at age 88. With the exception of two years at the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory after his training in Pathology at Presbyterian Hospital (GME’56), he spent his entire career at the Perelman School of Medicine. A member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Nowell was among the pre-eminent scientists to receive the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award, the nation’s highest honor for biomedical research.
Dr. Nowell's far-reaching scientific legacy lives on through the fond memories of his professional peers and the lasting impact of his ideas that suffuse the medical landscape today. Read a tribute in Penn Medicine Magazine.
Current Chairholder
Li-San Wang, PhD
Dr. Li-San Wang is the Peter C. Nowell, MD Professor and founding Co-Director of the Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center (PNGC) at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Dr. Wang’s research focuses on the genetics and genomics of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders as well as informatics and algorithm development for human genetics and functional genomics. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the National Institute on Aging Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease Data Storage Site (NIAGADS). He also serves as Multiple Principal Investigator (MPI) of the Genome Center for Alzheimer's Disease (GCAD). Both of these NIA–funded initiatives support the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) and other Alzheimer's genetics research. He is founding PI of the Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACAD), an international study on the genetics of dementia in Asian Americans and Canadians.
Previous Chairholder
- Kojo S.J. Elenitoba-Johnson, MD, 2015-2022