Saijuan Chen PhD

Chen Saijuan, female, born in Qinxian, Zhejiang, specializing in Cytogenetic and molecular genetics, received her doctorate degree from University Paris 7 in 1989. She is currently dean of National Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, executive director and researcher of Shanghai Hematology Research Center. In the research of cytogenetic and molecular genetic study of leukemia, she is the first in the world to clone the breaking point cluster of the first intron in BCR gene of Ph+ leukemia and put forward the model of BCR-ABL rearrangement.
She is the first in the world who discovered a clinical subtype of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) with t (11;17), successfully cloned PLZF-RAR fusion gene resulted from the translocation. During these years, she cloned the fusion genes NUP98 and HRX, etc. Recently, the basic and clinical study of differentiation/apoptosis inducing treatment of APL by all-trans retinoic has taken lead in the treatment of leukaemia and tumor surgery. She has published over180 papers, which have been cited for more than 3600 times and won 9 important national awards in science, such as the National Natural Science Award (second prize). In 2003, she was elected academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.