Abramson Cancer Center director elected to lead American Association for Cancer Research
Robert Herman Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, has been elected to become the 2026-2027 President-Elect of AACR.
Members of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) have elected Robert Herman Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, to the position of 2026-2027 President-Elect. Vonderheide will become President-Elect on Monday, April 20 during the 2026 AACR Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, and will assume the Presidency in April 2027 at the 2027 AACR Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
AACR is the first and largest cancer research organization dedicated to accelerating the conquest of cancer, with more than 62,000 members residing in 143 countries and territories. AACR’s mission is to prevent and cure all cancers through research, education, communication, collaboration, science policy and advocacy, and funding for cancer research.
“As the full power of discovery science is being unleashed to treat and cure more cancer patients than ever before, now is the time to accelerate and double down on cancer research. I am so proud to serve as AACR president during such transformative progress for our field,” Vonderheide said. “The AACR is a special organization that is uniquely positioned to draw on the tremendous talent and drive of its members to ensure support and passion for cancer research in every setting: in research labs, classrooms, board rooms, community centers, and halls of government. The imperative is clear: science improves and saves lives. Together, we are meaningfully changing what it means for patients to hear, ‘You have cancer.’”
With Vonderheide’s AACR election, Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) experts have recently helmed five of the foremost oncology professional societies, highlighting Penn’s strength in developing national leaders in all domains of cancer care and research. Lynn Schuchter, MD, recently completed her term as the 2023-2024 President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Ronald P. DeMatteo, MD, recently completed his term as the 2024-2025 President of the Society of Surgical Oncology. Neha Vapiwala, MD, is currently serving a one-year term as President of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Alison Wakoff Loren, MD, is currently serving a one-year term as Vice President of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), which will be followed by successive terms as President-Elect and then President.
A distinguished leader in cancer care and research
Vonderheide is the John H. Glick, MD Abramson Cancer Center Director’s Professor, the Vice Dean of Cancer Programs in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and Vice President of Cancer Programs at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. As director of the ACC, he leads one of only seven cancer centers in the U.S. to be continuously designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute since 1973.
Vonderheide is an internationally renowned cancer immunotherapy and translational research expert. Through his integration of basic and clinical investigations, he has advanced the establishment of cancer treatment strategies and defined the immunobiology of tumor microenvironments using genetically engineered laboratory models. Over the course of his career, he has deciphered mechanisms of cancer immune surveillance and developed novel immunotherapeutics for patients with pancreatic cancer, melanoma, and breast cancer. He is well-recognized for driving the development of agonist CD40 antibodies, and discovered that telomerase is a universal tumor antigen, leading efforts to develop telomerase vaccination for both cancer therapy and the prevention of cancer in healthy individuals. More recently, he has investigated the potential of KRAS inhibition to intercept pancreatic cancer.
Vonderheide was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2023, and he was elected as a Fellow of the AACR Academy in 2025. His additional awards and honors include the Jill Rose Award for Scientific Achievement from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (2025), the Breakthrough Challenge Zent Family Award (2024), and the DuPont Guerry Award for Outstanding Mentorship (2016) and William Osler Patient Oriented Research Award (2012), both from the University of Pennsylvania. He was the co-leader of the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C)-Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Convergence Dream Team and the leader of a New Therapies Challenge Research Team funded under the Pancreatic Cancer Collective, a strategic partnership between the Lustgarten Foundation and SU2C.
E. John Wherry elected to AACR Board of Directors
Additionally, E. John Wherry, PhD, the Barbara and Richard Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology & Translational Therapeutic, was elected to serve on the AACR Board of Directors for the 2026-2029 term. Wherry also serves as director of both the Colton Center for Autoimmunity and the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health (I3H), where researchers are conducting deep profiling of individual immune systems to capture each patient’s unique immune fingerprint, a living blueprint of personal health and disease, that offers new ways of thinking about health care.