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Work Phone Number:

(310) 825-6873
310-825-4793

Laboratory Address:

Laboratory
615 Charles E. Young Dr. South
BSRB, Rm 161
Los Angeles, CA 90095
UNITED STATES

Mailing Address:

Mailing Address
615 Charles E. Young Dr. South
BSRB, Rm 173
Los Angeles, CA 90095
UNITED STATES

Office Address:

Office
615 Charles E. Young Dr. South
CAMPUS - 796322; BSRB, Rm 190
Los Angeles, CA 90095
UNITED STATES

Work Email Address:

syuchen@mednet.ucla.edu

Website:

Home Page.
Home Page.
Home Page.

Dr. Irvin S.Y. Chen received his B.A. in biology/genetics at Cornell University in 1977, and his Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin in 1981. He trained under the guidance of Dr. Howard Temin, a 1975 Nobel Laureate for Medicine. Dr. Chen continued postdoctoral studies with Dr. Temin in 1981?1982, and at UCLA in 1982?1984 with Dr. David Golde. Since 1990, Dr. Chen has been a professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and in the Department of Medicine in the UCLA School of Medicine. He has served as director of numerous laboratories in the UCLA medical center, and is the founding director of the UCLA AIDS Institute since its inception in 1991. He also served as the head of the multi-million dollar UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), National Institutes of Health infrastructure program for 16 years. He is an internationally renowned investigator in cancer and AIDS research, and he has made significant scientific contributions to the study of the human retroviruses, human T?cell leukemia virus (HTLV), which causes leukemia, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the causative agent of AIDS. He was the first to clone a leukemia virus known as HTLV?II, and he is co-inventor of a blood screening test that is used in blood banks worldwide. He has made a number of fundamental discoveries regarding how HTLV and HIV infect cells and cause disease. In 1995, he and a co?investigator made the discovery that an infant infected by HIV at birth was able to rid itself of the AIDS virus and became cured. This discovery has given hope that AIDS may be curable some day. Early investigations by his group on the genetic variation of HIV-1 determining cell tropism led to subsequent discovery by others of the HIV-1 co-receptor CCR5. Recent work is directed at genetically ablating CCR5 as a therapy for HIV-1 disease. Genetic therapy, not only for HIV-1 disease, but as a strategy for effective long term control of many diseases currently requiring expensive and continuous medication, is one career goal. To that end, Dr. Chen was the first to develop gene therapy vectors that can target specific cells and tissues of the body through intravenous injection. Dr. Chen has been granted four patents arising from his scientific discoveries. He has published over 200 articles on his work in scientific journals.

Detailed Biography:

Dr. Irvin S. Y. Chen, Director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, is Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, Molecular Genetics and Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and is an internationally recognized retrovirologist and molecular biologist. Dr. Chen’s focus is on human retroviruses that are implicated in cancer and AIDS. This form of virus reproduces by creating DNA from RNA and adding its genetic code to the chromosomes of the cells it has infected. Along with his exploration of the disease-causing process of the AIDS virus—HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), Dr. Chen also was instrumental in identifying HTLV II, a human T-cell leukemia virus. Dr. Chen was the co-inventor of a diagnostic test for this virus currently used in blood banks throughout the world.