Chan Kok Yen, Jerry

Professor Chan read Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with Honours and first in his class in 1997. He began his postgraduate residency in England, mainly in Manchester and London. He completed the rest of his OBGYN training in Singapore in 2009, and a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility in 2011, and is a practising accredited specialist in in Assisted Reproductive Technique in KK Women's and Children Hospital. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in London.

Professor Chan completed a PhD in intrauterine stem cell therapies at Imperial College London. Thereafter, he returned to Singapore and started the Experimental Fetal Therapy laboratory, with a primary focus in developing novel fetal molecular therapies in the form of gene transfer and stem cell transplantation. Since then, he has been continuously funded by major grant funding bodies for his research, and has supervised over 12 PhD students successfully. He has published over 170 papers, including prestigious journals such as The Lancet, Nature, Cell, Science, Immunity, PNAS, Blood, Stem Cells among others.

My research interests are in the characterisation of fetal stem cells, such as mesenchymal stem cells, haemopoietic stem cells, endothelial progenitor cells and neural stem cells, and developing their translational use for both fetal and post-natal therapy, and in tissue engineering through studies of directed differentiation, homing and migration, and cell-cell interactions. We work with small and large animal models of different diseases and inherited conditions through xeno-transplantation, and utilise transcriptomics, proteomics and micro-fluidics approaches to delineate stem cell potency and interactions with other cell types of interest. Derivation of cGMP mesenchymal stem cells for bone repair and fetal transplantation is being developed.

Another area of research is into fetal gene transfer with non-human primates, allowing both safety and efficacy of such approaches to be assessed in the only animal model which approximates human fetal ontogeny and placentation.

Clinical research interests encompasses reproductive medicine in areas such as fertility preservation, development of novel ovarian reserve biomarkers and delineating the pathogenesis of endometriosis through application of tissue engineering principles and biosensing technologies.

Education

• PhD Imperial College, London (2002 — 2005)
• MB BCh BaO MA Trinity College Dublin (1992 — 1997)
• Anderson Secondary School

Companies

• Director, KK Research Centre KK Women's & Children's Hospital (2013)
• Honorary Associate Professor University of Queensland (2010)
• Associate Professor Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (2010)
• Senior Consultant Reproductive Medicine Specialist KK Women's and Children's Hospital (2010)
• Associate Professor National University of Singapore (2010)
• Bozo EUREKA (2014 — 2014)
• Assistant Professor / Associate Consultant Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (2005 — 2009)
• Clinical Research Fellow Imperial College London (2001 — 2005)

Awards:

• NMRC Clinician Scientist Award (Senior Investigator), 2017-2021
• Singapore Health Quality Service – Star Award, 2017
• Singapore Health Quality Service – Silver Award, 2014
• Distinguished Researcher Award – SingHealth Excellence Awards, Singapore, 2013
• 22nd Benjamin Henry Sheares Memorial Lecture. Intrauterine Stem Cell Transplantation and Gene Therapy. OGSS. Singapore International Congress of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2011