Penn Medicine Launches Colton Center for Autoimmunity with $10 Million Gift

Penn Medicine has launched the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, made possible by a $10 million gift from alumni philanthropists Stewart and Judy Colton. The new center unites research and patient care programs across Penn — including the Penn Institute for Immunology, the world’s largest single-institution immunology community — with the shared goal of advancing autoimmune disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.

Autoimmune diseases affect more than 23.5 million Americans, causing the immune system to attack the body’s own healthy cells. Conditions like celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis disproportionately affect women and represent a leading cause of death and disability in the United States.

Leading the new center is Dr. E. John Wherry, director of the Penn Institute for Immunology and chair of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine. Under his direction, the center is organized around four strategic pillars: catalyzing the development of new therapies, cultivating the next generation of researchers through the Colton Scholar and Fellow Awards, investing in big data tools and deep immune profiling, and collaborating with the existing Colton Centers at NYU and Yale.

As the third institution in the growing Colton Consortium, Penn brings its world-class immunology infrastructure and clinical reach to a coordinated, multi-university effort to transform how autoimmune diseases are understood and treated.