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Professor Kian Fan Chung MD DSc FRCP
Fan Chung is Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Head of Experimental Studies Unit at National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London. He is also honorary consultant physician at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, combining clinical activities, and clinical and basic research activities.
Professor Chung obtained his medical degree from the University of London and received training in internal and respiratory medicine at the Hammersmith Hospital, at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and at Charing Cross Hospital, London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. He obtained his MD research degree on an analysis of bronchial hyperresponsiveness in asthma and did postdoctoral training on a Medical Research Council Visiting Fellowship at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California San Francisco, investigating the role of airway inflammation in bronchial hyperresponsiveness. He joined the National Heart & Lung Institute in 1985, where he pursued his interests on inflammatory mediators in asthma and their effects on airway smooth muscle function. He was awarded a Science doctorate (DSc Medicine) in 2001.
Professor Chung is an internationally recognised clinical scientist in the field of airways disease and inflammation. He has authored and co-authored over 600 scientific articles, reviews and book chapters, including 7 books. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals including American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, European Respiratory Journal, European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, European Journal of Pharmacology, Respiration and Respirology. He is Editor-in-Chief of BioMedical Central Cough. He has worked as an expert member on national grant-awarding organisations including UK Medical Research Council, French INSERM, Australian NHMRC and Canada Innovation. He currently serves on the Council and Scientific Committee of the British Thoracic Society, and on the Program Committee of Allergy Inflammation and Immunology Section of American Thoracic Society.
The Unit consists of 12 researchers including lecturers, postdocs, clinical research fellows, research assistants and PhD students. The research focus includes mechanisms of airway inflammation and repair, airway smooth muscle biology and corticosteroid resistance with a particular emphasis on asthma and COPD. One overarching theme is the role and effect of oxidative stress in various pathophysiological processes in airways disease and its transduction pathways through the innate immune response. A major pole of attraction is the role of mitogen-activated protein kinase in these airway diseases underlying corticosteroid sensitivity. The approach is very much bench-to-bedside and vice-versa and much work is concentrated on cells obtained from patients that are well-characterised in the Unit and who may be participating in clinical trials and studies. His Unit is also interested in the mechanisms of chronic cough, and in developing and testing effective antitussives.
Professor Chung is a principal investigator in the Medical Research Council/Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma. His research is currently funded by grants from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and asthma UK. He is also a principal investigator of the European consortium UBIOPRED on mechanisms of severe asthma, that will be funded through the Innovative Medicine Initiative of the European Union and EFPIA. Professor Chung was also previously part of the NIH-funded Severe Asthma Research Program.
Within Imperial College, he is collaborating with Professors Bill Cookson and Miriam Moffatt on genotyping severe asthma through the EU-funded Gabriel project, Dr Andy Clark on the role of MAPK phosphatase-1 in corticosteroid resistance, Dr Mark Lindsay on the function of micro-RNA in airway smooth muscle function in airway disease, Professor Ian Adcock on molecular mechanisms of corticosteroid resistance in severe asthma and COPD, and Professors Terry Tetley and Paul Cullinan on the effects of environmental ultra-fine particles on airways dysfunction and inflammation.
