David S. Strayer

A Professor of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology at Thomas Jefferson University and the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the last 30 years, Professor Strayer is also an attending pathologist at Thomas Jefferson University-Affiliated Hospitals.

His career in clinical research has spanned immunology, pathology, virology and gene therapy, including studying the mechanisms of viral oncogenesis and virus-related immunosuppression and the study of clinical and immunological aspects of pulmonary surfactant as therapy for respiratory distress syndrome and the development. In applied virology and translational clinical trials his work has focused on viral gene delivery vehicles for potential application in treating diverse human diseases. This involved studying virus-host cell intercations and the impact on replication. His laboratory re-engineered simian virus-40 (SV40) for use as a gene delivery vehicle including exploiting its ability to evade the immune system. His team has modified the SV40 genome to carry genes of therapeutic interest, and used the resulting vectors effectively to deliver those genes to many cell types and organs, including bone marrow stem cells, neurons, liver, lung and other organs, in the cource of which demonstrating that repeated injection of SV40-derived vectors in vivo is feasible, effective and safe.

The significance of his work in gene therapy led to his appointment as Founding Chair of the NIH Gene and Drug Delivery Study Section, and countless presentations at national and international meetings.

He has held prior postions at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, the University of California, San Diego, Yale University and the University of Texas, Houston. He is the author over 150 original articles, over 200 abstracts and over 75 invited and review articles, and books, and is editor of a major textbook of Pathology (Rubin's Pathology: Mechanisms of Human Disease), published by Wolters-Kluwer.

He has an undergraduate degree in chemistry, from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and received his PhD in immunology and MD degree from the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.