Dr. Lee Yuan Liu Chen - 2025

Prof. Lee-Yuan Liu-Chen Department of Neural Sciences, Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA (USA) Lee-Yuan Liu-Chen obtained her BS degree in Pharmacy from National Taiwan University and her PhD degree in Neural and Endocrine Regulation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral training in Harvard Medical School, she worked for DuPont Pharmaceutical Co, where she started working on opioid receptors. She then established her own lab in Temple University School of Medicine. Her lab has been active in opioid receptor research for over 30 years. Her group was among the first to clone rat and human kappa opioid receptors (KORs). She and co-workers then elucidate the mechanisms of agonistpromoted KOR signaling, desensitization, internalization and downregulation as well as non-G protein interactions of the KOR, including GEC1 and NHERF, and the functional significance of the interactions. Her lab contributed to illustrate the structure of the MOR by demonstrating the covalent binding site of β-FNA bound to be Lys233(5.39) and the interaction of that the DRY motif in the TM3 with the i3 loop before X-ray crystal structure of the MOR was solved. In recent years, her lab has expanded into in vivo KOR pharmacological studies of agonists in rodents, including behavioral studies and investigations of KOR phosphorylation, and internalization and signaling and relationship between behavior and biochemical changes in brains.

They demonstrated differences between nalfurafine, a clinically used KOR agonist, and U50,488, a prototypic KOR agonist, in rodent behaviors and brain signaling by phosphoproteomics study, contributing to understanding of biochemical basis of KOR agonist-induced side effects. In recent years, using two custom-generated KOR-tdTomato and KORiCre mouse lines, they are studying neuroanatomy and functional significance of KOR-related circuitries. The recent focus is on the paraventricular nucleus of thalamus (PVT), illustrating the importance of KOR in the PVT in affective behaviors.