Kellen Chen appointed director of the Office of Research and Partnerships Biobank

Kellen Chen has been named director of the Office of Research and Partnerships Biobank. Dr. Chen is an associate professor in the Department of Surgery in the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson and jointly in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He also directs both the Biospecimen Core and the Tissue Acquisition and Cellular/Molecular Analysis Shared Resource Core at the U of A Cancer Center.

The ORP Biobank brings together the U of A Cancer Center Biobank and the biobanking resources previously housed within University of Arizona Health Sciences, creating a more integrated resource to support investigators across the university. As a resource within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the ORP Biobank provides standardized biospecimen infrastructure to advance clinical and translational research. 

Dr. Chen earned his bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and his doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University.

In addition to his biobanking leadership, Dr. Chen directs a research laboratory investigating the mechanisms of fibrosis and tissue regeneration across organ systems, with applications to wound healing, skin grafting, medical device implantation, liver disease and cancer.