Profile
Dr Jianmin Chen is a Lecturer in Inflammation and Cardiovascular Medicine and Versus Arthritis Career Development Fellow at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London. Jianmin attained a Doctor’s degree in Clinical Medicine from Sichuan University, China in 2012. She was awarded with a PhD scholarship for her doctoral studies in Cardiovascular Pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London from 2012 to 2016, focusing on pathophysiology and experimental treatments of sepsis-induced cardiac dysfunction. She joined Professor Mauro Perretti’s group at the William Harvey Research Institute as a postdoctoral researcher in 2017. She applies her expertise of cardiovascular research to the fields of arthritis to investigate cardiac comorbidities faced by patients with rheumatoid arthritis. In 2022 she received her Versus Arthritis UK Career Development Fellowship. Her current research aims to investigate the mechanisms for cardiomyopathy in inflammatory arthritis and explore novel therapeutic strategies.
Awards and Honours
- Bülbring Award, British Pharmacology Society
- Career Development Fellowship, Versus Arthritis UK
- European New Investigator, European Shock Society
- WHRI New Investigator Award, William Harvey Research Institute
- William Harvey Medal & Best Oral Presentation, William Harvey Research Institute New Year Celebration
- Travel Awards, conferred by Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference on Shock, 16th Congress of the European Shock Society and International Federation of Shock Congress, respectively
Links to my other profiles
Research
Group members
- Mr Ahmad Hjiej Andaloussi (PhD student)
- Mr Weifeng Bu (PhD student)
- Mr Thomas Dudley Wright (PhD student, 2nd Supervisor)
- Dr Marilena Christoforou (Post-doctoral Fellow, PI)
- Dr Tong Liu (Post-doctoral Fellow, Co-PI)
Summary
Cardiovascular comorbidities contribute to around half of all deaths in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), with non-ischaemic heart failure being a major cause. RA patients are particularly susceptible to a type of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), which is accompanied by diastolic dysfunction. The causes of diastolic dysfunction in RA are unknown and current medications for RA have limited cardioprotective effects: the clinical unmet need for increased congestive heart failure (CHF) remains pressing. To address this unmet clinical need, we have identified a mouse model of arthritis, K/BxN F1 progeny, which recapitulates the specific diastolic dysfunction of RA patients; this is the first mouse model of inflammatory arthritis identified which shows diastolic dysfunction.
My research aims are to understand the pathophysiology of cardiac diastolic dysfunction in inflammatory arthritis and to develop novel therapeutics for this fatal side-effect of arthritis.
Ongoing projects include:
- Identify whether cellular/molecular dysregulation contributes to the development of cardiac dysfunction by analysing immune cell infiltration, and changes in cardiac metabolism in mice with inflammatory arthritis.
- Test the impact of both established classical anti-inflammatory and innovative pro-resolving therapeutic strategies on cardiac function and joint symptoms in mice with inflammatory arthritis.
- Assess the translational potential of current research using samples and data obtained from RA patients.
Furthermore, I have expertise in modelling a range of both acute and chronic cardiovascular diseases in mice and rats, including inducing polymicrobial sepsis/sepsis-associated cardiac dysfunction by cecum ligation and perforation surgery in mice, haemorrhage shock in rats, myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury and heart failure in rats. I am also interested in studying the pathophysiology and exploring novel therapeutic treatments of these disease conditions.
Collaborators
Internal
International Collaborators
- Dr Andreas Margraf (Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich)
- Prof Xavier Norel (INSERM U1148, LVTS)
Industry Collaborators
- Dr John Lupisella (Bristol-Myers Squibb)
- Dr Ricardo Garcia (Bristol-Myers Squibb)
- Dr Thomas Jonassen (ResoTher Pharma)
- Dr Samra Sanni (ResoTher Pharma)
Versus Arthritis Research Partner
