Penn Vet Names Christopher J. Lengner, PhD, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences

Andrew M. Hoffman, DVM, DVSc, DACVIM, Gilbert S. Kahn Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn Vet) has announced the appointment of Christopher J. Lengner, PhD, as the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences effective July 1, 2023.

Lengner, who will also be promoted to full professor effective July 1, is the Harriet Ellison Woodward Associate Professor and director of Penn Vet’s Center for Animal Transgenesis. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Cell and Development Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM). He has served as the associate director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine since 2017.

A graduate of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Lengner received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and then went on to become a Ruth Kirschstein Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Whitehead Institute at MIT in the lab of Rudolf Jaenisch. As a postdoc, he made seminal contributions to the field of epigenetic reprogramming in the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells – knowledge which is now broadly applied in disease modeling and development of cell-based therapies.

Lengner joined Penn’s faculty in 2011 as assistant professor. In 2017 he was named associate professor, and he was appointed as a Penn Fellow in 2019. He is a member of the PSOM’s NIH P30 Center for Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases, and the Tumor Biology Program of the Abramson Cancer Center. Lengner’s lab employs genetic and genomic tools in mice and in human organoid culture models to understand the molecular mechanisms that govern stem cell self-renewal, and how those mechanisms become dysregulated in disease states, particularly cancer. His research has appeared in over 100 peer-reviewed publications including in leading journals such as Cell Stem Cell, Gastroenterology, and Cancer Cell.

“Dr. Lengner’s accomplishments as a scientist, educator, and mentor, and his expertise in the fields of stem cell and cancer biology make him an ideal fit to lead the department forward and serve as a key member of the School’s leadership team,” said Hoffman.

Lengner succeeds Ellen Puré, PhD, Grace Lansing Lambert Professor of Biomedical Sciences, who has successfully led the department for a decade. Puré will return to the Biomedical Sciences faculty, and she will continue to serve as director of Penn Vet’s Cancer Center.

“It’s truly an honor to be selected to lead one of veterinary medicine’s premier basic biomedical research departments” said Lengner. “I look forward to serving the accomplished Biomedical Sciences faculty and fostering collaboration in a wonderfully collegial department which makes extraordinary scholarly contributions using molecular, genetic, and biochemical approaches to address fundamental questions in germ and stem cell biology, tissue regeneration, and cancer. The Department serves to bridge veterinary medical education with the broader biomedical research enterprise at the University, helping to place Penn Vet among the best research centers in the field.”