About

Horace M. DeLisser, MD, is a Professor of Medicine specializing in Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as the Associate Dean for Student Engagement, Networking, and Enrichment at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. DeLisser's research focuses on endothelial cell adhesion and motility, angiogenesis, tumor metastasis, and pulmonary hypertension. His laboratory investigates the role of PECAM-1 in promoting endothelial cell migration and its involvement in angiogenesis and tumor metastasis, particularly in the context of lung metastases. Since 2011, he has directed the Cell Center Core for the Pulmonary Hypertension Breakthrough Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, where his team isolates and characterizes lung vascular cells to study site-specific functional and molecular differences. Dr. DeLisser's clinical expertise includes general pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine. He is actively involved in medical education, emphasizing social medicine, cultural competency, professionalism, and humanism, and serves as the Associate Dean for Professionalism and Humanism at the Perelman School of Medicine. Additionally, he is the Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, leading efforts to promote inclusion and diversity among medical students, trainees, and faculty.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Biology
• Cell biology
• Internal medicine
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Spirituality and Religiosity in Adults With Head and Neck Cancer: A Scoping Review of Concepts, Measures, and Outcomes

  Oral Diseases · 2026-04-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: To synthesize evidence on spirituality in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), focusing on its dimensions, assessment strategies, and impact on health outcomes. METHODS: A comprehensive search of PubMed, Embase, LILACS, Web of Science, Scopus, and gray literature identified qualitative and quantitative studies explicitly addressing spirituality in HNC. Eligible sources were narratively synthesized. RESULTS: Twenty-one studies met inclusion criteria. Core spiritual dimensions included the search for meaning, inner peace, religious faith, and a positive outlook. Six studies reported associations between spirituality and improved quality of life (QoL), while three described enhanced coping capacity and emotional resilience. Religious faith, irrespective of denomination, was associated with better pain management, fewer treatment-related side effects, lower existential distress, and, in some studies, improved survival outcomes. The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-being Scale was the most frequently applied instrument, assessing beliefs, meaning, and inner peace. CONCLUSION: Spirituality was frequently associated with coping capacity, psychological adjustment, and QoL in patients with HNC. Integrating spiritual care into holistic oncology practice may enhance treatment adherence, resilience, and patient well-being.

  PublisherDOI

• Art Museum-Medical School Partnerships: A Mixed Method Analysis of Museum Educator Perspectives

  Journal of Museum Education · 2026-03-31

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• THIRTEEN YEARS OF A FORMALIZED MEDICAL ICU GRIEVING ROUNDS PROGRAM: ANALYSIS OF FACILITATOR SURVEYS

  CHEST Journal · 2025-10-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Spirituality and Health Summer Internship Program: Adapting Clinical Pastoral Education for Medical Student Instruction in Patient Spirituality

  Palliative Medicine Reports · 2025-04-22 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Background: Training in spirituality and spiritual care is limited in medical education. A potentially novel approach for addressing these gaps in medical training is an immersive, experiential internship focused on patient spirituality and spiritual care based on pedagogical approaches adapted from clinical pastoral education (CPE). Methods: Mixed method analyses were undertaken of participants pre- and post-program surveys and comments to assess the first five years of the six-week Spirituality And Health Summer Internship Program, modeled on a unit of CPE, for first-year medical students. Results: On a 5-point Likert scale (1 = poor/strongly disagree, 5 = excellent/strongly agree) participants rated the educational value (4.7, standard deviation [SD] = 0.3) and overall quality (4.4, SD = 0.35) of the internship highly and strongly endorsed they would recommend the internship to peers (4.48, SD = 0.36). Participants strongly valued (4.58, SD = 0.35) the opportunity to visit and have conversations with patients as a core activity of the internship. Following the internship, participants reported significant ( p = 0.013 to p < 0.0001) increases in their (1) awareness of how spirituality influences their lives, (2) knowledge of the potential impact of spirituality on the patient experience, and (3) knowledge of the role of spirituality in the lives of health care providers. Significant increases were also noted in participants’ comfort in (1) talking to patients, (2) talking about spirituality, and (3) talking to patients about spirituality. Conclusions: A medical student summer internship focused on patient spirituality and spiritual care modeled after CPE provides a level of immersion in this content not obtainable in typical medical school curricula.

  PublisherDOI

• Applying Community-Engaged Pedagogy to Culinary Medicine: Why and How Community Nutrition Enriches Culinary Medicine Curricula

  American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine · 2025-08-26

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Diet is a critical determinant of health, yet nutrition education remains underemphasized in medical school curricula, leaving physicians inadequately prepared to discuss nutrition with patients. Culinary Medicine (CM), a growing field blending nutritional science with practical culinary skills, offers a promising model for enhancing medical trainee competence in dietary counseling. However, many CM programs focus primarily on nutrition and culinary training, often underutilizing the educational potential of community engagement. This article advocates for the integration of community-engaged pedagogy (CEP) as a vital third pillar in CM curricula. CEP fosters reciprocal learning between medical trainees and community members, which deepens student understanding of patients' lived experiences with social determinants of health, enhances the practicality of dietary recommendations, and promotes novel forms of interprofessional collaboration. The authors provide recommendations and examples of how CEP can be embedded into CM training and call for rigorous evaluation of CEP integration to ensure that outcomes align with the goals of both students and community partners. Ultimately, as CM courses grow in popularity and become incorporated into more academic curricula, it is important to ensure that CEP becomes established as a core element of CM programming.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Medical Humanities Council: A Model for Medical Student-Led Advancement of the Health Humanities

  Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This paper describes the Medical Humanities Council (MHC), a student-led initiative to promote the health humanities at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) at the University of Pennsylvania. Building on data-focused advocacy, peer benchmarking, and collaboration with curricular leaders, the MHC has become the cornerstone of a sustainable and flourishing health humanities infrastructure and programming targeted at medical students at PSOM. The MHC illustrates how student advocacy can advance the arts and humanities and serves as a model for student-led promotion of the health humanities, particularly when programing and/or institutional support are lacking.

  PublisherDOI

• Diversity-Focused Undergraduate Premedical Enrichment Programs: The Impact of Research Experiences

  Advances in Medical Education and Practice · 2025-02-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Purpose: Many diversity-focused, premedical enrichment programs anchor around a mentored research experience. Data, however, are lacking on how participation in mentored biomedical research in these program impacts participants' subsequent medical student experience. To begin to address this gap, a cohort of first year medical students who had matriculated through a diversity-focused premedical enrichment programs was queried about the impact of their previous research experiences and their perceptions regarding medical school related research. Methods: This mixed methods study involved 10 first year medical students from groups underrepresented in medicine (URiM) who had matriculated to the Perelman School of Medical School of Medicine through the Penn Access Summer Scholars (PASS Program) and 10 non-URiM first year peers. At the start of medical school and after their first year, participants completed structured interviews and Likert style surveys to assess the impact of their pre-medical school research experiences and their current beliefs about the significance of research experiences to their medical education. Results: The quantitative analyses of the survey data demonstrated that the PASS and the non-PASS students were similar in their attitudes, beliefs, and assessments of their research competence. In contrast, qualitative analyses of the interviews offered a more nuanced picture of the differences and similarities between the two groups. The PASS students expressed more confidence in their research skills and felt better able to establish and maintain connections with mentors compared to their non-PASS peers. Both groups of students, however, expressed frustration at the lack of identity-concordant mentors to support their research aspirations and felt the pressure to do research to support their competitiveness for the residency match. Conclusion: The research experiences of diversity-focused enrichment programs may foster the agency and self-efficacy of participants in ways that support their success in medical school.

  PublisherDOI

• Non-canonical HIPPO-MST1/2 promotes hyper-proliferation of pulmonary vascular cells through CDC20

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-04-04 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  HIPPO components mammalian Ste20-like protein kinases 1 and 2 (MST1/2) are well described growth suppressors. However, in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), MST1/2 switch their roles and become pro-proliferative and pro-survival molecules, supporting hyper-proliferation of pulmonary artery (PA) smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) and adventitial fibroblasts (PAAFs), remodeling of small PAs, and pulmonary hypertension. Here, we report that MST1/2 promotes hyper-proliferation and apoptosis resistance of human PAH PASMCs and PAAFs by up-regulating cell division cycle protein 20 (CDC20), establishing novel link between HIPPO-MST1/2 and cell cycle regulation in PAH. Authors Contributions: conception and design of the work (EAG, SSP, TVK); acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data (TD, IZ, LJ, SOO, AP, TA, DL, DG, JRG, PJW, HD, TK); drafting and editing the manuscript (EAG, SSP, TVK, JRG, PJW).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lactate dehydrogenase-induced DNA Topoisomerase 1 is a novel regulator of smooth muscle cell proliferation and remodeling in pulmonary arterial hypertension

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-11-12

  preprint

  Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) manifests by increased proliferation and survival of pulmonary vascular cells in small pulmonary arteries (PAs), PA remodeling and unresolved increase of PA pressure. PA smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) in PAH undergo metabolic shift to glycolysis resulting in over-production of lactate, hyper-proliferation, and apoptosis resistance, but the mechanisms are not completely understood. By using lung tissues and pulmonary vascular cells from PAH and non-diseased human lungs, unbiased proteomics, network analysis, and gain-and-loss of function approaches, we here report that up-regulation of lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA)-lactate axis promotes PASMC-specific over-lactylation and consequent over-accumulation of DNA topoisomerase 1 (TOP1) in small remodeled PAs from PAH lungs, leading to the up-regulation of Akt-mechanistic target of rapamycin 1 (mTORC1) signaling, hyper-proliferation, and reduced apoptosis. Smooth muscle-specific LDHA knockdown prevented, and Ldha inhibitor oxamate reversed SU5416/hypoxia-induced TOP1 accumulation, pulmonary vascular remodeling, and pulmonary hypertension (PH) in mice. Pharmacological inhibition of TOP1 with indotecan suppressed Akt-mTORC1, decreased proliferation, induced apoptosis in human PAH, but not control PASMCs, and reversed PA remodeling, PH, and RV dysfunction in rats. Collectively, these data provide a novel mechanistic link from LDHA-driven lactate over-production through lactylation and overaccumulation of TOP1, to the up-regulation of Akt-mTORC1, hyper-proliferation and apoptosis resistance of PASMCs, pulmonary vascular remodeling, and PH, and identify TOP1 as a new potentially attractive molecular target for the remodeling-focused therapeutic intervention. Take-home message: LDHA-lactate-induced over-lactylation and overaccumulation of Topoisomerase 1 (TOP1) promotes pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell hyper-proliferation, remodeling, and pulmonary arterial hypertension, which are reversed by TOP1 inhibitor indotecan.

  PublisherDOI

• Noncanonical HIPPO-MST1/2 Promotes Hyperproliferation of Pulmonary Vascular Cells through CDC20

  American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology · 2025-09-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K14HL003382

  NIH · $596k · 2001

• NIH Grant R01HL062254

  NIH · $924k · 2004

• Short-Term Research Education Program to Increase Diversity in Health-Related Research

  NIH · $2.2M · 2006–2026

• NIH Grant R01HL079090

  NIH · $1.4M · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• Elena A. Goncharova

  University of California, Davis

  29 shared

• Steven Μ. Albelda

  29 shared

• Tatiana V. Kudryashova

  University of Pittsburgh

  29 shared

• Rashmin C. Savani

  28 shared

• Sourik Beltrán

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  28 shared

• Daniel J. Arenas

  University of Pennsylvania

  28 shared

• Dmitry A. Goncharov

  University of California, Davis

  28 shared

• Marissa Pharel

  Rush University Medical Center

  27 shared

Labs

• Horace M. DeLisser LaboratoryPI