Jianchun Chen, MD, is a Research Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension. Dr. Chen received his doctorate from Kunming Medical University, China, and followed up by doing his fellowship in nephrology at Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Chen's research interests are investigating the underlying molecular mechanisms of acute and chronic kidney injury. Research has been focusing on investigating the role of EGF receptor activation in renal epithelial cells (proximal tubule cells and podocytes) in chronic and acute kidney injury, our lab found that EGFR activation plays a beneficial role in the kidney recovery from acute kidney injury (mainly utilizing ischemia-reperfusion mouse model) by its anti-apoptotic and mitogenic effects on renal proximal tubule epithelial cells; However, prolonged EGFR activation in chronic hyper activation of renin-Angiotensin system or diabetic condition plays detrimental role by producing excessive radical oxygen species or crosstalk with TGFß-Smad2/3 signaling pathways, thereby causing epithelia cell damage or promoting the epithelial cells to undergo dedifferentiation.