{"id":2250,"date":"2009-01-13T18:33:25","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T23:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/chenlab-2\/chens-biography\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T09:16:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T14:16:53","slug":"chens-biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/chens-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Chen&#8217;s Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Research: Systems cancer biology and immunology, cancer therapeutic response, protein-protein interaction networks (interactomes), post-translational modifications, epigenetic regulation, signal transduction, disease marker discovery.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-left alignnone wp-image-2464 size-medium\" style=\"border: 1px solid #666666\" title=\"Chen\" src=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/794\/2024\/12\/Xian-Chen-phd-photo-300x200.jpeg\" alt=\"Xian Chen \" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/794\/2024\/12\/Xian-Chen-phd-photo-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/794\/2024\/12\/Xian-Chen-phd-photo.jpeg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/h2>\n<h2>Xian Chen<\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"blue\"><em><strong>Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics<\/strong><\/em><\/span><br \/>\nFaculty Director, Quantitative Proteomics Center for Disease Marker Discovery<br \/>\n<span class=\"discreet\">(PhD \u2013 Penn State University)\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Xian Chen is a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC-CH, Faculty Director for UNC-Duke Michael Hooker Proteomics Center, and a member of Lineberger NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center. He completed his B.S. undergraduate degree in Chemistry for Peking (Beijing) University, China. He then came to US to obtain his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the Penn State University. Followed by a two-year postdoctoral training in the field of molecular biology and enzymology at University of Florida Health Science Center, he joined Life Science Division, Los Alamos National Lab, first as a postdoctoral fellow studying in multi-dimensional structures of DNA and proteins primarily using NMR, later he became a staff member and then was promoted to the Leader of a bioanalytical team. He joined the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty in late 2006.\u00a0 Because of his multi-disciplinary training background, Dr. Chen has broad research interests cross biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, and biology, with an emphasis on studies of systems dysregulation of cellular signaling and functional pathways in diseases. His research group in conjunction with the technology development mission at the Proteomics Center also focus on developing novel techniques capable of performing systems investigation to address \u2018real-world\u2019 biological concerns in more sensitive, precise, and high throughput way.<\/p>\n<div class=\"directory-profile single \">\n<div class=\"directory-post-content\">\n<h3><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10603 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/795\/2019\/08\/Faculty-OGE-Trained-mentor-badge-400dpi-for-website-300x181.png\" alt=\"Trained Faculty Mentor endorsed by Office of Graduate Ed UNC Chapel Hill\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\" \/><\/h3>\n<h3>HONORS &amp; AWARDS<\/h3>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>The 2001 Patent &amp; Licensing Awards, Los Alamos National Lab, 2002<\/li>\n<li>Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), 1999<\/li>\n<li>Department of Energy Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, 1999<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span class=\"blue\">RESEARCH<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Our research focuses on both developments and applications of unconventional and transformative technology of systems biology, novel mass spectrometry-based proteomics and proteogenomics approaches in particular, to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying pathogenesis of various human diseases such as cancer, asthma, and immune disorders. We are interested in a broad range of signaling and epigenetic regulatory pathways\/mechanisms underlying exactly how tumor cells escape from immune surveillance, but not limited to the Toll-like receptor (TLR)-mediated pathways and DNA damage response pathways. Our ultimate goal is to mechanistically derive novel, precise disease markers for early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention.<\/p>\n<p>As the Director of Technology Development in UNC Proteomics Center, Dr. Chen has an innovative track record in developing an array of new proteomic and proteogenomic technologies for both discovery and clinical application in cancer biology and immunology. He is also the UNC PI of the NCI Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC). He has developed many novel MS-based quantitative proteomic methods; he invented amino acid-coded mass tagging (AACT) (a.k.a SILAC) that has unique strengths for comparative analysis of protein-protein interactions and post-translational protein modification. The Chen lab has demonstrated the unique strength of quantitative proteomics in dissecting and discovering new pathways involved in immune\/inflammatory signaling and cancer epigenetic regulation.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"visualHighlight blue\">PUBLICATIONS<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/myncbi\/xian.chen.1\/bibliography\/44009692\/public\/?sortby=pubDate&amp;sdirection=descending\">complete publication list for Xian Chen<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>NEWS<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/news\/xian-chen-phd-featured-on-the-proteomics-show-podcast-road-to-chicago-series\/\">Xian Chen PhD featured on The Proteomics Show podcast \u201cRoad to Chicago\u201d series (Dec. 2022)<\/a><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"blue\">Lab Contact<\/span><\/h3>\n<div>Lab Rooms: 3072 Genetic Medicine<\/div>\n<div>Lab Phone: 919-966-7489<\/div>\n<div>Fax: 919-966-2852<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research: Systems cancer biology and immunology, cancer therapeutic response, protein-protein interaction networks (interactomes), post-translational modifications, epigenetic regulation, signal transduction, disease marker discovery. Xian Chen Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics Faculty Director, Quantitative Proteomics Center for Disease Marker Discovery (PhD \u2013 Penn State University)\u00a0\u00a0 Xian Chen is a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/chens-biography\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Chen&#8217;s Biography\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41619,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-2250","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","odd"],"acf":[],"_links_to":[],"_links_to_target":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2482,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2250\/revisions\/2482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/chenlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}