霍华德•休斯医学研究所研究员

得克萨斯大学西南医学中心分子生物学系教授

生物医学科学乔治•麦格雷戈特聘讲座教授

炎症研究中心主任

美国科学院院士

美国国家医学院院士

2019年美国科学突破奖获奖者

科学委员会——陈志坚

Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Professor, the University of Texas; Director, Inflammation Research Center; George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair, Biomedical Science at UT Southwestern; the Breakthrough Prize Laureate; Member, American National Academy of Sciences

Zhijian ‘James’ Chen is an Investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He is also Director of Inflammation Research Center and George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science at UT Southwestern. Prior to moving to Dallas, Chen was a senior scientist at ProScript Inc. where he helped discover the proteasome inhibitor VELCADE, a medicine used for the treatment of multiple myeloma. After joining UT Southwestern in 1997, Chen discovered the regulatory role of ubiquitination in protein kinase activation in the NF-κB and MAP kinase pathways. In addition, he discovered the Mitochondrial Antiviral Signaling (MAVS) protein that reveals a new role of mitochondria in immunity. More recently, Chen discovered cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) as a cytosolic DNA sensor and a new cyclic di-nucleotide signaling pathway that mediate innate immune responses in animal cells. For his work, Chen has received numerous honors including the National Academy of Science Award in Molecular Biology (2012), the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Merck Award (2015), the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences from the Foundation of NIH (2018) and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2019). Chen is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.