David Elder

Affiliation

Division of Anatomic Pathology, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Biography

Trained in anatomic and clinical pathology and subsequently specialized in dermatopathology. Have focused on pigmented lesions including in particular melanocytic nevi and malignant melanoma, including clinical, pathologic, epidemiologic and genomic aspects, with an emphasis on tumor progression in melanoma. Interest began during training and subsequently in the laboratory of Wallace H Clark Jr M.D. during the period of the first descriptions of dysplastic nevi. Have been continuously funded by the NIH since 1990 as a principal investigator or co-investigator of projects in Program Project and SPORE grants in collaboration with investigators at Penn and the Wistar Institute, and was Principal Investigator of an RO1 grant, “Genetic epidemiology of melanoma” from 2001-2011. Currently, Director of the Dermatopathology Subsection in Anatomic Pathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and an international reference pathologist for pigmented skin lesions and melanoma. Have over 300 peer reviewed publications, and have been editor for the last 4 editions of “Lever’s Histopathology of the Skin”, a comprehensive textbook of skin pathology that has been published continuously since 1948, and most recently have been lead editor of the 4th edition of “WHO classification of skin tumors” and an Editor of the pending 5th Edition. Have also been a member of pathology panels responsible for the development of the AJCC 8th Edition staging system for melanoma (2017), and management guidelines for the American Academy of Dermatology and the International Collaboration for Cancer Reporting (ICCR), both in 2019. In addition, am a founding and senior continuing member of the M-PATH group which has developed a diagnostic system that addresses uncertainty and error in the current diagnostic procedures for melanocytic tumors.