The Center for Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Bioinformatics in Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine is the main base for research, education and international cooperation of precision medicine. The Center was established in May 2013, headed by Professor Zhang Jian, and further integrated with the Medical Bioinformatics Center and Chemistry Teaching Department in May 2020. The Center has been focusing on the development of precision medicine and pharmaceutical innovation technology and its application in clinical diagnosis and treatment. The independently developed technology of allosteric drug design has an important influence in the world, and has been used by more than 60,000 medical users from more than 100 countries in the past five years. At the same time, the Center has undertaken a number of research and transformation projects of medical big data and artificial intelligence in the domestic and overseas, and cultivated a group of precision and translational medicine talents. It provides support for the docking of biomedicine and artificial intelligence era.
The Center has an excellent faculty. At present, there are 22 teachers in the Center, 75% of whom have doctor's degree. Among them, 1 is a senior, 8 are associate senior, and 4 are doctoral and master supervisors. Zhang Jian, director of the Center, is a distinguished professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, excellent doctoral supervisor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who has obtained the Outstanding Youth Fund of The National Natural Science Foundation of China, National High-level Talent Plan, National High-level Youth Talent Plan, and is also the member of the Innovative Research Group of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. As the corresponding author, he has published more than 100 SCI papers in international academic journals including Nat Chem Biol, Chem Rev, Chem Soc Rev and so on. Faculty members of the Center mainly participate in studies of drug design, bioinformatics, chemical biology and chemical materials, and have made a series of breakthrough achievements in precision target identification and first-in-class original drug discovery. Since the establishment, the Center has undertaken one Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, one Sailing Talent Program of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission, and one Frontier Research Youth Support Program of Basic Medical School, and published 120 papers associated with the identification of new target and drug discovery.
In terms of teaching, both the bioinformatics team and medical chemistry teaching team of the Center have undertaken teaching work for graduate students, undergraduate students and international students each year. The bioinformatics team offers courses such as "Bioinformatics", "Medical Image Processing and Analysis", "Biomedical Data Mining", "VB Programming" and "Computer Application Basis". At the same time, the medical chemistry teaching team offers courses such as "Medical basic Chemistry", "Medical Organic Chemistry", "Analytical Chemistry and Instrumental Analysis", "chromatographic analysis in medicine" and other courses. The Center has completed nearly 1500 credit hours of undergraduate and graduate theoretical courses every year, and assisted in 260 hours of undergraduate experimental courses, and it also offers bilingual courses. It is the chief editor of the English adaptation of Organic Chemistry. The teaching team has edited the English version of "Organic Chemistry", presided over 4 teaching projects, and published 3 high-level teaching papers. Many teachers have been the advisers of RBL and Great Innovation Projects, among which 1 project was awarded the Shanghai Municipal Level Project.
In terms of academic communication, the Center is committed to building a global biomedical innovation ecosystem together with partners from all fields. From original scientific research to efficient achievement transformation, it has formed good interaction and communication with partners. The Center deeply cooperates and communicates with the Shanghai Institute of Medicine of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Biological information technology research center, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Experimental Immunology Laboratory Cancer Research Center of National Cancer Institute of the U.S.A., Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital and Xinhua Hospital, which has made a series of scientific research progress.
The Center has also made many achievements in the scientific innovation cultivation of undergraduates and teenagers. As the innovation base for undergraduate students of the school, 5 students under our guidance have won more than 20 awards and funds, such as the National College Students Life Science Competition and the Challenge Cup Competition of Shanghai, they have published many SCI articles. At the same time, as the teenagers’ science training station of Shanghai Pharmaceutical Association and Shanghai Medical Science Practice Workstation, the Center successfully held popular science summer camp, providing prospective practice for the cultivation of biomedical talents in the future.