Prof.  Limin  Chen
Peking Union medical college, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences,  China

Title: The emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and blood safety: How can we prepare for pandemics?

Abstract:

Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases may threaten blood safety. In the past decades, we have been experiencing many pandemics such as COVID-19, which brought huge medical and economical burden to the whole world. In this presentation, updates on the recent outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious pathogens and how to judge whether they will endanger blood safety will be discussed. In the meantime, how can we prepare the unexpected pandemics to ensure blood safety will also be presented.

Biography:

Dr. Limin Chen, a professor with Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS)/Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) and also an affiliate scientist with the University of Toronto, Canada now is the director and chief scientific officer of the center for transfusion transmitted infectious diseases, Institute of Blood Transfusion (IBT), CAMS/PUMC,Member of the American Association for Studies of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and Canadian Association for Studies of Liver (CASL). He got his MD, MSc in biochemistry and molecular biology in China, PhD in molecular genetics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Chen obtained his postdoctoral training both at Merck Research Laboratories, Merck & Co. Inc (West Point, PA, USA) and at the Harvard Medical School (MGH) . Currently Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the virus-host interaction of the transfusion-transmitted viruses, especially on emerging and er-emerging infectious pathogens. He pioneered the work on identification of the response signature to predict treatment response using HCV as an model and proposed a novel mechanism on how virus exploits host innate immune response to benefit its persistent infection and resistance to interferon-based therapy.