Jianjun Chen

Jianjun Chen PhD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Systems Biology and Director of the Center for RNA Biology and Therapeutics at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a leading authority on the molecular pathology of haematological malignancies and a pioneer in epitranscriptomics — the study of RNA chemical modifications and their roles in cancer. His laboratory made landmark discoveries identifying N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA modification as a critical regulator of oncogene expression in leukaemia, demonstrating that the m6A writer METTL3 and reader YTHDF2 control translation of cancer-relevant mRNAs including MYC and BCL2, and that m6A dysregulation drives AML development. Chen's group has applied comprehensive multi-omics approaches integrating WGS, RNA-seq, m6A-seq, ribosome profiling, and proteomics to define molecular subtypes of AML, MDS, and other blood cancers. He contributed foundational work to TCGA on leukaemia molecular classification and developed novel RNA-seq-based classification algorithms for AML and MDS that are being translated into clinical diagnostic tools. His research also identified RNA splicing factor mutations (SRSF2, U2AF1, SF3B1) as major drivers of myeloid malignancy and characterised their mechanisms through integrated transcriptomic and genomic analysis.