【Development History】

The Department of Pathophysiology was established in (formerly Shanghai Second Medical University) in 1956. Between 1977 and 1989, Professor Wang Zhenyi, President of the University (foreign academician of the French Academy of Sciences in 1992 and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1994，winner of the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award in 2010) served as the chair of the department, dedicated to the study of atherosclerosis and hemostasis and thrombosis, and achieved a series of extraordinary results, which has won the second prize of Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, the third prize of Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Progress Award, the Shanghai Health System “Silver Snake Award” and etc. The discipline was also among the first to be the core subject of Shanghai city universities in 1984.

In 2002, Prof. Chen Guoqiang, the winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and one of Shanghai's Top Ten Outstanding Young People, took the lead and initiated the discipline construction focusing on connotation construction and innovative talent cultivation. Adhering to the scientific innovation spirit of “courageous to think, speak and operate with perseverance and dedication”, the research direction was focused on leukemia cell differentiation and apoptosis, chemical biology, proteomics, leukemia etiology. The department under his leadership has won many honors. The pathology discipline became the key discipline of 211 projects and one of the national key disciplines. The research team won the "National Working Leading Organization", "Shanghai Education System Distinguished Group", "Shanghai Outstanding Team", "Shanghai Model Team" and other titles. In 2018, Dr. Zhong Qing served as the chair of the Department of Pathophysiology.

【Team of Expertise】

The chair of the department is dedicated to the overall operation of the laboratory, implementing democratic management, research team leader responsibility system, formulating the discipline development plan, and setting the work objectives and incentive mechanism in terms of personnel training, scientific research input & output. Meanwhile, outstanding young scholars are encouraged to cooperate with internationally renowned scholars to carry out high-level cooperative research, and on the other side, the department is open to cooperation. Currently, the department is composed of 55 in-service staff, more than 70% of whom have doctoral degrees and overseas work experience, 19 of full investigators and 10 associate investigators, 1 academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 3 National High-level Talent Plan, 5 National High-level Youth Talent Plan, 3 National Distinguished Young Scholars winners, 3 Outstanding Youth Fund winners of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 2 High-Level Talent Programs of Shanghai.

【Research Overview】

The Department of Pathophysiology is involved in biomedical research areas that span a broad range of tumor cell fate determination, including mechanisms of initiation and development of solid tumors and hematopoietic tumors, hematopoietic and leukemia stem cells, tumor molecular markers research and targeted therapy, disease proteomics, structural biology and bioinformatics, and basic research on different cell death and survival pathways and tumor microenvironment, etc. The department carries out basic and translational medical research in pathogenesis and therapeutics with the multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary principle. The department has undertaken more than 200 projects including the 12th Five-Year Support Plan of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the "973" Plan and the "863" Plan, the National Natural Science Foundation's Major Integration, Key Project, General Projects and Shanghai Research Projects. Nearly 300 SCI papers were published on the internationally high-profile academic journals such as Nature, Cell Metabolism, Cancer Cell, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communication, PNAS, Blood, etc. In addition, the department has won the second prize of the National Natural Science Award, the first prize of China Medical Science and Technology, the Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, Shanghai Natural Science First Prize and other awards. Dozens of patents have been authorized. The Department of Pathophysiology has trained more than 120 masters and doctoral students, one of whom won 100 National Excellent Doctoral Thesis, 7 the Shanghai Graduate Outstanding Achievement Award, and 1 the WuRui Scholarship.