# Saijuan Chen

Source: https://onco.cc/people/chen-saijuan/  
OnCo record `chen-saijuan` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Saijuan Chen helped turn acute promyelocytic leukaemia from a leukaemia that often killed within weeks into one of the most curable, by showing how retinoic acid and arsenic act and combining them.

## Summary

With Zhu Chen and Zhen-Yi Wang at the Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Chen dissected the PML-RARA fusion and the mechanisms of all-trans retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide, and led the trials showing that the two drugs together produce high-quality, durable remissions in newly diagnosed APL (PNAS 2004), the basis of chemotherapy-free APL treatment now standard worldwide. Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; her genomics work spans AML, T-ALL and lymphoma.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Also known as: Chen Sai-Juan; 陈赛娟
- Tags: china
- Role: Professor; Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine
- Specialisms: Acute promyelocytic leukaemia; Leukaemia genomics; Differentiation therapy

## Sources

- Ruijin Hospital: https://www.rjh.com.cn/
- PubMed author search: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Chen%20SJ%5BAuthor%5D%20acute%20promyelocytic%20leukemia%20Shanghai%20Institute%20of%20Hematology

## Connected records

- cancers: [Acute myeloid leukaemia](https://onco.cc/cancers/aml/)
- drugs: [Arsenic trioxide](https://onco.cc/drugs/arsenic-trioxide/), [Tretinoin (all-trans retinoic acid, ATRA)](https://onco.cc/drugs/tretinoin-atra/)
- institutions: [Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University](https://onco.cc/institutions/ruijin-hospital/)
- people: [Zhu Chen](https://onco.cc/people/chen-zhu/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/chen-saijuan.json