Paul J. Zhang, MD

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Get to know Pathologist Dr. Paul J. Zhang, who serves patients in Pennsylvania.

Sees patienting age 18 and up, Dr. Zhang is Chief Physician of China Consultation Service, AP Division within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

His clinical interests include diagnostic pathology in soft tissue tumors, sarcoma and cancers of breast, GYN tract, pulmonary tract, ENT, diagnostic immunohistochemical and in-situ hybridization, as well as evaluation of tumor markers for personalized treatment in surgical specimens.

A Penn Medicine physician, Dr. Zhang serves as a Consultant at Pennsylvania Hospital; Director of Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology Subspecialty Service, AP Division within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Director of Breast Marker Service, AP Division within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; and is a staff physician at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. He is also a part of these programs: Penn Anatomic Pathology Services and Penn Sarcoma Program.

Educated in China, Dr. Zhang graduated with his medical degree from Guangzhou Medical University. He then immigrated to the United States in 1985, where he was a research associate in Dr. Jack Levin’s laboratory in the Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco, before entering an AP/CP residency program at New York University in 1989. 

After four years of residency training in New York University, Dr. Zhang did a year of intensive fellowship training in oncologic pathology at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center, New York City, under the chairmanship of world renowned Dr. Juan Rosai from 1993–1994. In 1994, he started his academic career at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, under the Chairmanship of Dr. John J Brooks. In 1998, he moved to his current institution, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Board-certified in anatomic and clinical pathology, Dr. Zhang is a Diplomate of the American Board of Pathology (ABPath). The mission of the ABPath is to promote the health of the public and advance the practice and science of pathology by establishing voluntary certification standards and assessing the qualifications of those seeking to practice the specialty of pathology.

The doctor’s research expertise includes various tumor markers in diagnostic and prognostic application, in-situ molecular morphometry in tumor diagnosis and prognosis, hypoxia in sarcoma, translational research in sarcoma, growth factors receptors in breast cancer, mechanism of lymphangiogenesis and lymphatic invasion in cancer, as well as the significance and determination of host immune response on surgical specimen in cancer patients’ prognosis.

Among his professional affiliations, Dr. Zhang is an active member of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, the Arthur Purdy Stout Society of Surgical Pathologists, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the International Skeletal Society, the International Society of Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology, and the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology.

Pathology is a branch of medical science that involves the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of surgically removed organs, tissues, bodily fluids, and in some cases, the whole body. Pathologists are physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and management of diseases by laboratory methods. 

Throughout his extensive line of work, Dr. Zhang has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in various medical and pathology journals, as well as a number of book chapters and books.  

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