Research Programs: Transplant Biology and Therapy
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Blood and Marrow Transplantation

chenw@umn.edu
612-625-7609 — office

Dr. Chen's clinical profile
(University of Minnesota Physicians Web site)

Dr. Chen is an associate professor of pediatrics in the University of Minnesota Medical School's Division of Hematology-Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation, and he is a member of the Masonic Cancer Center's Transplant Biology and Therapy Research Program. Dr. Chen is internationally recognized as an expert in the field of immunotherapies for hematological malignancies.

Dr. Chen received his medical degree in 1982 and his doctorate degree in immunology in 1987 from Shanghai Medical University, China. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in medical oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle from 1988 to 1991. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1999, Dr. Chen was a research assistant professor from 1991 to 1996 in the Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, and he was associate staff from 1996 to 1999 at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dr. Chen's research is focused on developing immune-based therapies for cancer, with particular research interest in treating leukemia, lymphoma, and hematological malignancies. His research group is developing new strategies to activate cancer patients' own immune cells, which have the ability to specifically recognize and kill tumor cells. The goal of his research is to apply cancer vaccines, cellular therapies, and novel immune enhancing drugs to prevent and treat tumor recurrences following chemotherapy or bone marrow transplantation. Dr. Chen has published more than 60 research papers in medical journals on basic and clinical cancer research. He is a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Hematology, and the American Association of Clinical Oncology. He also is a member of the American Cancer Society National Grants Committee, the principle investigator and chair of the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grants Committee, and a member of the Leukemia Research Foundation Medical Advisory Board and National Grants Committee.

Research Interests

1. Immunotherapy with antigen-specific T cells

- Leukemia-specific T cell induction and antitumor effects

- Molecular mechanisms of regulatory T cell induction

2. TLR-targeted immunotherapy of hematological malignancies

- Mechanisms of CpG ODN-mediated antitumor immunity

- TLR agonists-based immunotherapy of human leukemias

3. Immunobiology of human dendritic cell (DC) subsets

- Development and immune regulatory function of DC subsets

- Dendritic cell-based leukemia vaccines

Selected Publications

Vallera D.A., Ni J., Shu Y., Panoskaltsis-Mortari A, Kelekar A., and Chen W.: Retroviral immunotoxin gene therapy of leukemia in mice using leukemia-specific T cells transduced with IL-3/BAX hybrid gene. Human Gene Therapy. 14:1787-1798, 2003

Chen W., Antonenko S., Sederstrom J.M., Liang X.Q, Chan A.S.H., Kanzler H., Blom B., Blazar B.R., and Liu Y.J.: Thrombopoietin cooperates with FLT3-ligand in the generation of plasmacytoid dendritic cell precursors from human hematopoietic progenitors. Blood 2004;103:2547-2553.

Moseman E.A., Liang X.Q., Dawson A.J., Panoskaltsis-Mortari A., Krieg A.M., Liu Y.J., Blazar B.R., and Chen W.: Human plasmacytoid dendritic cells activated by CpG oligodeoxynucleotides induce the generation of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells. J. Immunol. 173:4433-4442, 2004

Chen W., Chan A.S.H., Dawson A.J., Liang X.Q., Blazar B.R., and Miller J.M.: FLT3-ligand administration after autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation increases circulating dendritic cell precursors that can be further activated by CpG oligodeoxynucleotides to enhance T-cell and NK-cell function. Biol Blood Marrow Transplant. 2005;11:23-34.

Wu A, Xiao J, Hall WA, Gregerson DS, Chen W, and Low W. Identification of EGFRvIII-Derived CTL epitopes restricted HLA-A0201 for dendritic cell based immunotherapy of gliomas. J Neurooncol. 2006;76:23-30.

Weigel BJ, Panoskaltsis-Mortari A, Diers M, Garcia M, Lees C, Krieg AM, Chen W, Blazar BR.: Dendritic cells pulsed or fused with AML cellular antigen provide comparable in vivo antitumor protective responses. Exp Hematology 34:1403-1412, 2006

Wu A, Oh S, Gharagozlou S, Vedi RN, Ericson K, Low WC, Chen W, Ohlfest JR: In vivo vaccination with tumor cell lysate plus CpG oligodeoxynucleotides eradicates murine glioblastoma. J. Immunotherapy. 30:789-797, 2007

Chen W, Liang X, Peterson AJ, Munn DH, Blazar BR. Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase pathway is essential for human plasmacytoid dendritic cell-induced CD4+ regulatory T cell generation. J Immunology. 2008 (In press)