In 2017, he and Deng Hongkui engineered resistance to HIV in mice using CRISPR gene editing, and for the first time used the technique on an AIDS patient.
He later served as Director of the Beijing Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapy Laboratory and Director of the PLA Institute of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Research at the Fifth Medical Center (formerly the 307 Hospital) of the People's Liberation Army General Hospital in Beijing.
[1][2] Chen spent more than 30 years researching treatment for leukemia, with a focus on hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) therapy.
[1] In 2015, his research on the treatment of radiation damage using adult stem cells won the State Science and Technology Progress Award (First Class).
[5] Their research demonstrated the safety of CRISPR for humans, although the therapy was not effective for curing AIDS as only 5% to 8% of the patient's bone marrow cells carried the edited CCR5 gene, much lower than the ideal 100%.