On Thursday, May 19, 2022 The Division of Allergy & Immunology in The John T Milliken Department of Medicine at Washington University in St Louis proudly hosted the H James Wedner Symposium.
H. James Wedner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1941. He received B.A. in Zoology from Cornell University in 1963 and his M.D. from the same institution in 1967. He did his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis.
In 1985, Dr. Wedner established the Training Program in Allergy and Immunology for the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics. In 2001, Dr. Wedner became the Chief of the Division of Allergy & Immunology. Under his leadership, the Division of Allergy and Immunology grew from two to eight faculty members and clinical activities expanded to three locations. Dr. Wedner had trained 101 fellows (many of whom currently serve our community) by the time he stepped down from the Program Director role in 2018. He also handed over the reins at the helm of the Division in 2019 to Dr. Kendall, though he continues to be active in clinical and translational research and maintains a busy practice.
During his career, Dr. Wedner has been the recipient of many awards and honors. He is sought after to head clinical trials, especially in the fields of hereditary angioedema and asthma. He has given too many presentations to count and has published over 180 articles. His most fulfilling research projects have included: establishing a method for decreasing the allergenicity of cats using cat food; being at the forefront of the development of multiple treatments for HAE beginning with the first approved drug for this disease and, more recently performing the first gene therapy to cure HAE; and establishing a new pollen allergy, Parthenium hysterophorus.
Speakers at the symposium included Warner Greene, MD, PhD, Andrew Kau, MD, PhD, Timothy Sullivan, MD, and H James Wedner, MD.