Kavli Oxford Lecture Award 2026 - Professor Jue Chen
Kavli Oxford Lecture Award 2026
Professor Jue Chen
The fifth Kavli Oxford Lecture Award will be given by Jue Chen, Phd, William E. Ford Professor, Rockefeller University.
Hosted by Kavli Oxford's Founding Director, Professor Dame Carol Robinson, Professor Chen will speak on: 'ABC Transporters: how a common engine drives diverse functions' (abstract below).
The lecture will take place on Monday 8 June 2026 at 16h00 in the Blakemore Lecture Theatre, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Sherrington Road, Oxford. It will be followed by a drinks reception at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building, Sherrington Road, Oxford.
* Open to University of Oxford staff and students only.
* Entry to both buildings is strictly on presentation of a University Bodleian card.
* The lecture is in person only, and will start at 16:00 sharp. Seating is limited to 190 attendees.
* Please note that late arrivals cannot be accommodated.
Lecture abstract:
ABC transporters are ATP-powered membrane proteins that are ubiquitous across biology, with more than 80 members in E. coli and 48 in humans. Despite sharing a common architectural framework, these transporters carry out remarkably diverse functions. In this talk, I will highlight three features that make ABC transporters particularly fascinating. First, their substrates range from small ions and chemicals to lipids and large proteins, spanning systems that are exquisitely selective to those that are broadly promiscuous. Second, ABC transporters function as both importers and exporters, raising fundamental questions about how transport directionality is encoded within a shared mechanism. Finally, I will discuss CFTR, an unusual member of the ABC family that functions not as an active pump but as a passive ion channel. Together, these examples illustrate how a conserved molecular machine has been adapted to serve diverse biological roles.
Dr Jue Chen is the William E. Ford Professor and head of the Laboratory of Membrane Biology and Biophysics at Rockefeller University. Her research program focuses on the comprehensive analysis of ABC transporters and the application of these mechanistic insights to improve human health. Her recent studies include the cystic fibrosis conductance regulator (CFTR), the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP), and the multidrug transporters P-glycoprotein and MRP1.
Dr Chen received her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Ohio University in 1993 and her PhD in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 1998, where she was advised by the late Dr Don C. Wiley. She completed her postdoctoral work at Baylor College of Medicine under the guidance of Dr Florante A. Quiocho. In 2002, she joined Purdue University as a faculty member and moved to the Rockefeller University in 2014. She was named a Pew Scholar in 2003 and has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2008. In 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Details about previous recipients of the Kavli Oxford Lecture Award are available on our website.
