PHILADELPHIA – Penn Medicine’s Gary Lichtenstein, MD, a professor of Medicine and Gary Wu, MD, the Ferdinand G. Weisbrod Professor in Gastroenterology were recently recognized by The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) with 2015 Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Scientific Achievement Awards.
Lichtenstein, who also directs Penn’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, was awarded the Scientific Achievement in IBD Clinical Research Award and Wu won the Scientific Achievement in Basic IBD Research Award.
Lichtenstein has led the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center for 22 years. His current research has looked into investigational therapies for ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease treatments. He has served as the principal investigator in trials evaluating novel agents in the treatment of UC and Crohn’s disease.
Wu serves as the associate chief for research in Gastroentorology, the co-director of the Penn-CHOP Microbiome Program as well as the associate director of the Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Disease at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.
The awards were given out at the CCFA’s annual Advances in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Conference in Orlando, Florida earlier this month.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.