Dr. Dechen Lin

Biography

Dechen Lin is Assistant Professor at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of the University of Southern California and serves as the Associate Director of Research for the USC Head and Neck Center at the Keck School of Medicine. He leads a research program focused on cancer genomics, transcriptional regulation, and epigenomics, particularly head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and esophageal cancers. Lin earned a B.S. in Biology from Nanjing University in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in 2010. He completed postdoctoral training at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Before joining USC in 2022, he held faculty positions at Cedars-Sinai and served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at UCLA. His research employs advanced genomic organoid-based models to investigate the molecular mechanisms driving cancer progression and immune evasion. Notably, his recent work identified the gene KMT2C as a key regulator of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, enhancing the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapies for HNSCC. Dechen Lin has been recognized with numerous awards, including the NIH/NCI R37 MERIT Award in 2020 and the Ming Hsieh Research Award in 2023, and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Research Interests

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Awards