Dr. Wen-Jun Shen has trained as a biochemist and molecular biologist; she has been working for almost 25 years on various aspects of molecular physiology specializing on metabolisms (including insulin secretion, lipid homeostasis, and bone regeneration). Early in her scientific career, she has worked on mechanisms controlling the human insulin receptor gene expression and has identified the cis-element responsible for Rb stimulation of human insulin receptor. In the past 20 years, she has been studying the involvement of lipases; lipid droplet associated proteins as well as their interacting proteins in the control of lipid homeostasis. They are shown that TG and CE rich lipid droplets have different population of associated proteins and lipases. During stimulation, lipases and lipid droplet associated proteins undergo various modifications and form different interacting pairs to facilitate the lipid droplet metabolism. They are characterized the functional significance of hormone sensitive lipase (HSL), identified and studied the functional significance of interacting pairs of HSL-perilipin, HSL-FABP4, HSL-vimentin as well as HSL oligomerization. They are also demonstrated that both steroidogenic and hepaticscavenger receptor class B type I (SR-BI) are subject to post-transcriptional and posttranslational regulation including via dimerization/oligomerization, protein-protein interaction (SR-BI: NHERF1/NHERF2), phosphorylation (SIK-1) and micro RNAs (miR-125a, miR-455), and consequently regulate selective HDL-CE in liver and steroidogenic cells, reverse cholesterol transport (RCT), biliary cholesterol delivery and cholesterol utilization for steroid synthesis by adrenal gland and gonads. To study the physiological significance of lipid homeostasis, she has worked in many animal models studying the metabolic consequences of disturbed lipid metabolism, these includes obese, diabetic and diet induced obesity animal models. More recent studies also include investigations into the implications of altered lipid homeostasis on bone regeneration.

Lipid metabolism.