“His work has inspired research in many related areas, such as skin and anaesthesia, and provided novel drug targets for treating chronic itching, neuro-developmental abnormalities in children, mental health disorders and social autism.”
Chen, a graduate in virology from China’s Wuhan University, had lived in the US since 1990 – first as a doctoral student and then as a researcher and academic.
He earned a PhD in mouse genetics from the University of Texas followed by postdoctoral training at Caltech, before joining the Washington University School of Medicine’s anaesthesiology department as an assistant professor in 2000. He became a full professor in 2009.
Two years later, was appointed founding director of the university’s Centre for the Study of Itch and Sensory Disorders – the world’s first such interdisciplinary study centre.
Chen and his colleagues made a series of discoveries to advance the understanding of how itch works. For instance, they reported that itch was contagious – the brain cells of mice would be activated when they saw other mice scratch, making them start scratching as well.
While the Shenzhen lab announcement did not mention the circumstances of its latest recruitment, Chen’s return is seen as a direct result of his lab at the study centre being shut down and his group dismissed after investigations under the China Initiative.
The policy, launched during the administration of then US president Donald Trump, aimed to curb alleged theft of US intellectual property. But critics said it unfairly targeted Asians, Chinese in particular, with grant fraud cases related to alleged failure to disclose ties to China on their applications.
The investigations, led by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), might have been linked to allegations about authorship, as papers published by Chen’s lab often listed researchers from various Chinese institutes and hospitals as co-authors, according to Deep Science, a Chinese-language science news portal.
The fact that most students in Chen’s lab were Chinese nationals might also have gone against him, Wu Xiaobo, an associate professor from the same department as Chen, was quoted as saying by Deep Science.
Chen’s research grants have been suspended, and his lab has been sealed off.
As investigations are not yet complete, it remains unclear if the lab has been closed temporarily or permanently, according to Deep Science.
Although the widely criticised China Initiative was formally closed in February last year, its effects continue to destroy careers, upend lives, and send chilling signals across the academic community.
Earlier this year, China-born molecular biologist Fu Xiangdong resigned from the University of California, San Diego, where he had worked for 30 years. This came after he was investigated and suspended for alleged ties to China.
Fu has joined Westlake University in eastern China to continue his world-leading research into Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
Scientist exiled from US brain research finds well-funded lab in China
In April, ex-Harvard chemist Charles Lieber was found guilty of making false statements, filing false tax returns and failing to report a Chinese bank account. He was sentenced to six months of house arrest following years of investigation that deeply hurt his career and health.Due to the dramatic decline in US-China relations in recent years, most China Initiative cases saw US universities choose to side with the federal government so that their billion-dollar research funds would not be threatened, Wu said on his Chinese-language blog.The NIH, which is investigating Chen’s case, is the biggest funder by far of academic biomedical research in the United States, and some medical centres receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the agency, according to Science magazine.
Shenzhen Bay Lab was opened by the Guangdong provincial government in 2018, with a focus on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, metabolic syndromes, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative disorders, according to its official website.
The lab has 10 institutes and centres, and around 200 scientists recruited from around the world.
It is headed by Yan Ning, a structural biologist who left Princeton University last November to head another new organisation in the southern Chinese city, the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation.ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tK%2FMqWWcp51ku6bD0miaoaGelny0r8iepZydX5a%2FtbXCpZxoa2Jmhnl%2Fk2igrZuYYrSmusRmqpyhlaPBqr%2FTZqGooZ6oerS0xKexoZ2eYravv9Oiq66slWKup8DEq2Suq12hrqN50p6YpZ2UYry3sdFmmKWklZyypXnCoaCnmV2htq%2B30g%3D%3D