Shao-Cong Sun

Shao-Cong Sun (孙少中) is a world-leading cancer immunologist who returned to China in mid-2025 after three decades of distinguished work in the United States, joining the Chinese Institutes for Medical Research (CIMR) in Beijing as a Distinguished Investigator and Director of the Chinese Institute for Immunology. His departure reportedly followed unspecified investigations of him by the US government.

Sun is renowned for his pioneering research on T cells, the white blood cells that fight infections and destroy abnormal cells. His US roles included director of the Center for Inflammation and Cancer at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston from 2014 to 2022, where he held the M.R. Evely Hudson Foundation Endowed Professorship, following earlier work at Pennsylvania State University's Hershey Medical Center where he became a distinguished professor in 2007.

At CIMR, Sun's team studies the molecular mechanisms of anticancer immunity, autoimmunity, and inflammatory diseases, with an emphasis on T cell function and regulation. MD Anderson was among the first US institutions to dismiss China-born researchers following NIH warnings about potential research theft, part of a broader wave of scrutiny that began with the Department of Justice's China Initiative in 2018.