# Lieping Chen

Source: https://onco.cc/people/lieping-chen/  
OnCo record `lieping-chen` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Discovered PD-L1 (B7-H1) and showed tumours use it to escape immunity, the biology behind every anti-PD-1 drug.

## Summary

Lieping Chen (Yale) identified B7-H1, later named PD-L1, in 1999, showed in 2002 that tumours express it to kill or disable T cells and that blocking it restores anti-tumour immunity, and initiated the first anti-PD-1/PD-L1 clinical trials with Johns Hopkins colleagues. He received the Warren Alpert Prize with Honjo, Freeman and Sharpe and continues to discover normalisation-cancer-immunotherapy targets such as Siglec-15.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Tags: immunotherapy; discovery; pd-l1
- Role: United Technologies Corporation Professor in Cancer Research, Yale School of Medicine
- Specialisms: PD-L1 biology; Tumour immune evasion; Checkpoint discovery; Immunotherapy targets

## Sources

- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Chen%20L%5BAuthor%5D%20B7-H1%20PD-L1

## Connected records

- technologies: [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/)
- targets: [PD-1](https://onco.cc/targets/pd1/), [PD-L1](https://onco.cc/targets/pdl1/)
- institutions: [Yale School of Medicine / Yale Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/yale-school-of-medicine/)
- key papers: [Iwai and Honjo: tumours use PD-L1 to escape T cells, and blocking it restores attack](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-iwai-pdl1-tumour-escape-pnas-2002/), [Topalian 2012: the first large trial of a PD-1 antibody shows durable responses across melanoma, lung and kidney cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-topalian-anti-pd1-nejm-2012/)

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