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Zhibin Chen, M.D.,Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
Dr. Chen’s work focuses on characterizing the mechanisms of immune tolerance to prevent and reverse type 1 diabetes, as well as the potential of these mechanisms to achieve permanent acceptance of transplanted islets without the need for anti-rejection drugs.
Together with his colleagues, Dr. Chen has demonstrated a potent role of islet-specific CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ regulatory T (Treg) cells in protecting the pancreatic islets from inflammatory destruction and identified a key function of these Treg cells in suppressing immunopathology in the islet tissue.
With the aide of novel RNAi technologies, his team is studying the mechanisms and practical applications of Treg cell-enforced local protection of islet grafts.
Dr. Chen obtained his medical degree from Luzhou Medical College in Sichuan, China, and received his Ph.D. in immunology from Duke University, with his dissertation, under the mentorship of Dr. Garnett Kelsoe, on cellular immunology of B-lymphocytes, humoral immunity and systemic autoimmunity.
He then joined the laboratory of Drs. Diane Mathis and Christophe Benoist for his postdoctoral research at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School, where he received training in the use of molecular biology approaches to investigate the breakdown of central and peripheral immune tolerance of T-lymphocytes in autoimmune diseases, particularly type 1 diabetes.
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>>Read an interview with Dr. Chen
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