Zhenjun Chen

Dr Zhenjun Chen obtained his PhD in 2001 at The University of Melbourne. By 2018, he has published 37 papers, including 4 in Nature (Pang et al, 2010; Illing et al, 2012; Kjer-Nielsen et al, 2012 and Corbett et al, 2014), 4 in Nature Immunol, 2 in Nature Comms, 3 in J.Exp Med 1 in PNAS and 1 in Mucosal Immunology.

Chen once worked on MHC polymorphism, antigen presentation and diseases. He had generated a few transgenic mouse lines for Celiac Disease model. He also established an in vitro T cell cellular assay for measuring T cells activation, which involving reconstitution of specific MHC molecules/their mutants in different APC cells and reconstitution of TCR genes/their mutants in Jurkat/SKW3 cells for human and BW58 cells for mouse. This in vitro T cell cellular assay is currently used by many labs around the world for its simplicity and reliability.

CI Chen's work currently focuses on the recently discovered Mucosal Associated Invariant T (MAIT) cells. He has established animal models with infectious bacteria and fungi for assaying MAIT cell activation, function and vaccination. He is actively exploring potential immune-therapies based on MAIT cells. He is co-supervising a junior postdoc, one PhD and two Masters students. He contributed to the key breakthroughs of MAIT antigen discovery (Nature 2012, 2014) and development of MR1 tetramers to enable specific detection of MAIT cells (JEM 2013), which in turn unravelled the biology of MAIT cells (NI 2x2016, 2017; 2x Nature Comms 2017, 2018; JEM 201, 2x 2015).