Department History

Institutional roots go back to 1740 when Benjamin Franklin founded the College of Philadelphia. The Medical School, the oldest in North America, was founded in 1765 and the University of Pennsylvania assumed its present name in 1791.

Since for 100-plus years the Medical School had no Department of Pathology, Anatomic Pathology and Laboratory Medicine were taught by professors in the other basic science departments or the Department of Medicine. William E. Horner, Professor of Anatomy, wrote his Treatise on Pathologic Anatomy in 1829 and founded a museum of pathological specimens. Alfred Stillé, in the Department of Medicine, wrote the popular Elements of General Pathology in 1848.

In 1874, the Medical School outgrew its location in downtown Philadelphia, moved west across the Schuylkill River to its present site and erected the first university hospital in the United States. Two years later the first chair in pathology was filled by Dr. James Tyson. Later chairmen have included: Simon Flexner, later head of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; Eugene Opie; and Edward Krumbhaar.

William Osler, during his tenure in the Department of Medicine (1884-1889), spent much time with students performing autopsies to introduce anatomic pathology as a powerful teaching tool in the practice of clinical medicine.

William Pepper, Jr., from the medical family which greatly influenced the Medical School during the 19th and early 20th centuries, contributed personally to help found the clinical pathology laboratory. As William H. Welch said at its dedication in 1895, "It is the first laboratory of its kind provided with its own building and amply equipped for research in the country and it is not surpassed in these respects in any foreign countries." The Division of Laboratory Medicine is still known to many in the Department as "the Pepper Lab," its 100th Anniversary having been celebrated on December 4, 1995.

Following World War II, Balduin Lucké became Chairman, best known for his work on virus-induced renal carcinoma in amphibians. Both Surgical Pathology (which had been part of the Departments of Surgery and of Obstetrics & Gynecology) and the clinical laboratories (which had been run by the Department of Medicine) became integral parts of the Department of Pathology in 1967 when Peter C. Nowell was named Chairman. Nowell's identification of the Philadelphia chromosome and his discovery of the mitogenic activity of phytohemagglutinin brought increased prominence to the basic research group and he subsequently won the Lasker Award for his pioneering work. The Immunobiology Group was greatly strengthened during the 1970s. Nowell retired from the Chairmanship in 1973 to return to his research and David T. Rowlands, Jr. became Chairman for a six-year term. Following Dr. Rowlands' departure for the Chairmanship at the University of South Florida, Dr. Leonard Jarett became the first Chairman of the renamed Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and its first Simon Flexner Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine as well.

During the 18 years of Dr. Jarett's leadership (1980-1998), the Hospital and School of Medicine demonstrated their commitment to greatly expand and renovate laboratory space in Laboratory Medicine, Anatomic Pathology, and Research Pathology. The Department occupied over 85,000 s.f. in the Hospital, and 47,000 s.f. in School of Medicine research areas. The Hospital staffing, especially in Laboratory Medicine and Anatomic Pathology, nearly tripled to some 65 full-time faculty. NIH funding rose to over $15 million per year as the Department ranked second nationally. The Residency Training Program expanded from its previous 16 residents to over 40 residents and fellows, extending to five years with the inclusion of a year devoted to the investigation and study of disease. The voice recognition system in Anatomic Pathology and the robotics laboratory in Laboratory Medicine are advanced technologies that were completed during Dr. Jarrett's term.

Dr. Mark Tykocinski assumed the Chairmanship of the department in 1998 and is its current Simon Flexner Professor and Chairman. Now in his second term as Chair, he has continued to expand the department which now has some 100 full-time faculty and is ranked number one among such departments in NIH funding. The residency training program continues to be one of the premiere training programs in the nation.

Having graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, Dr. Tykocinski earned his medical degree from New York University and then did an internal medicine internship at Columbia Presbyterian and an anatomic pathology residency at NYU Medical Center, all in New York. From 1981-1983, he was a medical staff fellow of the Immunogenetics Laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH in Bethesda, and he was then recruited to Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).

At Case Western Reserve, he founded and served as director of the Gene Therapy facility and also directed the Cancer Center’s Gene Therapy Program and the NIH-supported Skin Disease Research Center Molecular Biology Core Facility. His major research interests are the design of novel recombinant proteins with immunotherapeutic potential and the development of antigen-presenting cell-centered immunotherapeutics (APCs). Dr. Tykocinski has served as member and chair of the NIH Pathology B Study Section. He chairs the NIH Fellowship Review Committee and is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Pathology. His professional memberships include: American Society for Investigative Pathology; American Association of Cancer Research; International Society of Differentiation; and American Association of Immunologists. He has won the American Society for Investigative Pathology’s Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Award for outstanding research by an investigator under age 45.