Speakers & Awards

Pei-Jer Chen, MD, PhD

Pei-Jer Chen, MD, PhD, a Distinguished Investigator at the National Taiwan University and globally recognized expert on liver diseases, has been chosen to receive the 2025 Baruch S. Blumberg Prize.

“We are recognizing Dr. Chen for his major contributions to the clinical study of hepatitis B and hepatitis D therapeutics and biomarkers,” Hepatitis B Foundation President Chari A. Cohen, DrPH, MPH, said. “Not only is he an accomplished scientist and clinician, Dr. Chen is an important voice on hepatitis B in Asia and around the world.”

Ju-Tao Guo, PhD, acting president and chief scientific officer of the Blumberg Institute, which is the sister organization of the Foundation focused on research, said: “Dr. Chen has been a pioneer in hepatitis B and hepatitis D virology research and clinical management for several decades. His recent work on the molecular oncogenesis of hepatitis B associated liver cancer paves the way for its early detection and precision therapy of this deadly cancer.”

Dr. Chen said: “I am truly honored and excited to receive the Blumberg Prize. Dr. Blumberg’s groundbreaking work unveiled a fascinating science of hepatitis B and D viruses and led to effective vaccines and treatment in controlling the diseases devastating human beings. For decades, my team and I followed in his footsteps and those of other pioneers to identify novel viral proteins and their functions for antiviral development. And we developed an easy-to-use, immune-competent hepatitis B persistent mouse model for immunology and carcinogenesis research. These results have led to new biomarkers or therapies for hepatitis B and D and related liver cancer in clinical trials.”

Along with his research, Dr. Chen is a strong voice for those living with hepatitis B.

“I am very much sympathetic to the millions of chronic hepatitis B patients waiting for antiviral therapies,” Dr. Chen said. “We need to not only accelerate developing innovative curative therapies, but advocate for providing current therapies to treat more patients, as the new World Health Organization guidelines recommend.”

Dr. Chen has made significant contributions in understanding hepatitis B and hepatitis D biology, such as biological function of spliced HBV RNA, HDV RNA replication and phosphorylation of Delta antigen. He has been a part of almost every major clinical study of therapeutics and biomarkers of hepatitis B and D related disease for the past two decades. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Chen also made important contributions to research in the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis B-related liver cancer. He is a member of Academia Sinica and has published more than 600 articles in the areas of hepatitis and liver cancer.

The Baruch S. Blumberg Prize is the Hepatitis B Foundation’s highest honor. It is named for Baruch S. Blumberg, MD, DPhil, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1976 for discovering the hepatitis B virus. He was instrumental in the creation of the Foundation, served on our Scientific and Medical Advisory Board and was the Foundation’s Distinguished Scholar from 1992 until his death in 2011. The Foundation’s research arm was renamed the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute in his honor.

A committee of former Blumberg Prize recipients annually selects a new honoree. Past recipients include Dr. Harvey Alter, who was among the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology; Dr. Anna Lok, assistant dean for clinical research, University of Michigan Medical School; and Prof. Stefan Urban, head of Translational Virology at Heidelberg University Hospital.