Zhijian "James" Chen (; born 1966) is a Chinese-American biochemist and professor in the department of molecular biology at

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern or UTSW) is a public academic health science center in Dallas, Texas. With approximately 18,800 employees, more than 2,900 full-time faculty, and nearly 4 million outpatient vi ...

. He is best known for his discovery of mechanisms by which nucleic acids trigger innate and autoimmune responses from the interior of a cell, work for which he received the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Early life and education

Chen was born in Nandou Village () in An-khoe County,

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...

, China. When he was young, his father was sent to Lâm-pêng for work, leaving his mother to raise him and his two brothers alone while she also worked as a primary school teacher. He graduated from Anxi No. 1 High School in 1981. He attended Fujian Normal University and received an undergraduate degree in biology in 1985, before he won an overseas scholarship by getting first place in a biochemistry exam. Chen used the scholarship to attend the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he got his Ph.D. in

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

in 1991. During his graduate education, Chen became interested in the biochemical pathway of the protein ubiquitin at a time when less than a dozen laboratories were researching the protein's function in the human body. After graduating, Chen did a year of post-doctoral work with the

Salk Institute for Biological Studies The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, U.S. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vacci ...

Career

Following his post-doctoral work, Chen began working as a research scientist at

Baxter Healthcare Baxter International Inc. is an American multinational healthcare company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois. The company primarily focuses on products to treat kidney disease, and other chronic and acute medical conditions. The compan ...

Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...

. He then spent three years working as a senior scientist at biotech firm ProScript in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, Massachusetts, where he developed assays that helped to identify and improve the cancer treatment Velcade. His time at ProScript allowed Chen to work in molecular biology and drug development and it was while working there that Chen started researching ubiquitin. Working with

Tom Maniatis Tom Maniatis (born May 8, 1943), is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center. Education Maniatis received B.A ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1996, Chen found that the enzyme

kinase In biochemistry, a kinase () is an enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of phosphate groups from high-energy, phosphate-donating molecules to specific substrates. This process is known as phosphorylation, where the high-energy ATP molecule don ...

had to be "activated" by ubiquitin in order for the NF-κB signalling process to function properly. He decided pursuing his research into ubiquitin would be more suited for work in academia and left ProScript in 1997 to start a lab at the

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

. He currently holds the George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science and is an Investigator of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

Research

Chen's research initially focused on the role of ubiquitin in signaling pathways for the NF-κB protein complex, specifically as it pertains to

immune response An immune response is a reaction which occurs within an organism for the purpose of defending against foreign invaders. These invaders include a wide variety of different microorganisms including viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi which could ...

. At his lab in UT-Southwestern, Chen's group was able to show that ubiquitin marked proteins, marks that could be recognized by other proteins to create a "cascade" of signals. His research received grant funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2002 enabling research into how NF-κB initiated immune responses to

RNA viruses ''Orthornavirae'' is a kingdom of viruses that have genomes made of ribonucleic acid (RNA), those genomes encoding an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). The RdRp is used to transcribe the viral RNA genome into messenger RNA (mRNA) and to repli ...

such as

influenza Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...

and

hepatitis C Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that primarily affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. During the initial infection people often have mild or no symptoms. Occasionally a fever, dark urine, a ...

. This new line of research led to the discovery of MAVS (Mitochondrial Anti-Viral Signaling protein) and the role of mitochondria in antiviral innate immune responses, and the more recent discoveries of the cytosolic DNA sensor, Cyclic GMP-AMP synthase ( cGAS; cGAMP synthase), and a new second messenger, Cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate (cyclic GMP-AMP, cGAMP), which play key roles in immune defense as well as autoimmune diseases.

Honors and awards

In 2012 Chen was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, in 2018 the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

for his discovery of cGAS and also in 2018 the Ray Wu award from the Chinese Biological Investigators Society. In 2019 Chen received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for the discovery of the DNA-sensing enzyme cGAS and the pathways by which it activates innate immune responses. He shared this prize with C. Frank Bennett,

Adrian R. Krainer Adrian Robert Krainer is a Uruguayan-American biochemist and molecular geneticist known for his research into RNA gene-splicing. Krainer holds the St. Giles Foundation Professorship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, New York. ...

, Angelika Amon, and Xiaowei Zhuang. He has also received the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research and the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Science. In 2023 he was awarded the

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize The Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemist ...

.Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize 2023
/ref> Chen was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2014.

References

External links

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bio

Science Daily ''Science Daily'' is an American website launched in 1995 that aggregates press releases and publishes lightly edited press releases (a practice called churnalism) about science, similar to Phys.org and EurekAlert!. The site was founded by mar ...

. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
Chen Lab Research
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Zhijian 1966 births Living people American biochemists American scientists of Asian descent Chinese emigrants to the United States Howard Hughes Medical Investigators American people of Chinese descent Hokkien scientists People from Quanzhou Chemists from Fujian University at Buffalo alumni University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Chinese biochemists Educators from Fujian Biologists from Fujian Members of the National Academy of Medicine