Dr. Chen is an expert in the field of Multi-drug resistance (MDR). His research interests range from basic and clinical studies on drug resistance in leukemia, ovarian cancer, lung cancer and others.
The goal of the Chen’s laboratory, the Cancer Pharmacology Laboratory, is to develop more effective cancer chemotherapeutic agents. MDR represents a major obstacle to cancer treatment, and understanding the resistance mechanisms and knowing how to reverse the resistance hold the promise of providing insights that may lead to improvements in the use of anticancer drugs. The laboratory is dedicated to find anticancer agents that, alone, or in combination with other agents to circumvent drug resistance in cancer treatment.
Specifically, Dr. Chen’s group is interested in the molecular and cellular pharmacology of anticancer drugs, including drug resistance mechanisms, reversal of drug resistance and new drug development. Currently, they focus on the function of plasma membrane transporters such as P-gp, ABCG2 and MRPs. In collaboration with researchers in USA, China, Japan, Canada, Australia and Egypt, members in Chen’s laboratory screen and identify new inhibitors of ABC transporters by in vitro membrane vesicles transport assays and cell based assays. Another research direction is to study the role of ABC transporter family on the detoxification of chemicals (including carcinogens and mutagens) using ABC gene knock out mouse models.
Dr. Chen is an Editor-In-Chief of Journal of Cancer Research Updates and Journal of New Developments in Chemistry; Editor of African Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology (AJPP); Regional Editor of Recent Patents on Anticancer Drug Discovery (RPADD); Guest Editor of Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Cancers, and Journal of International Medical Research. Dr. Chen is also an Associate Editor of Journal of Analytical Oncology, and Journal of Cancer Metastasis and Treatment. He is also an editorial board member of 26 journals and a reviewer of more than 180 peer reviewed journals.
As a consultant to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and health industry organizations, Dr. Chen commands invitations for more than 150 presentations, keynote addresses, and conference chairman. He has published about 200 peer-reviewed articles and co-authored several book chapters.
Dr. Chen participated grant reviews for NIH (USA), Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (China), The Genesis Oncology Trust (New Zealand), National Science Centre (Poland), The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Grant (China), the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) (Hungary), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (Netherlands), the Czech Science Foundation (Czech), The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federal (Russia) and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (Canada).
Dr. Chen joined St. John’s University in September 2004 as an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology. Before joining St. John’s, he was a JSPS (Japanese Society for Promotion of Science) fellow in Kagoshima University, Japan and then a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medical Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. He was promoted to full Professor in 2012 at St. John’s University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
He obtained his Ph. D. from Kagoshima University, Japan, M.D. from Guangdong Medical and Pharmaceutical College, China and a M.S. from Sun Yat-Sen University, China.
