During his long-term professional career, Prof. XIANG Kunsan put special emphasis on the study of diabetes mellitus and its related metabolic disorders. 

In the later years of 1980’s, he carried on the first molecular genetics study on the overseas Chinese type 2 diabetes patients. And during the same decade period, he started the series molecular etiology studies of diabetes mellitus in China. 

He established the first molecular biologic sample library of diabetes population in China. He discovered the first pedigree of patients with mitochondrial diabetes and initiated the clinical screening for the patients with certain molecular biologic diagnostic technique. He conducted the first study of gene mutation spectrum of MODY diabetes in Chinese. He launched, manipulated and contributed to a project for the studies of type 2 diabetes and its relation to obesity and the metabolic syndrome from epidemiological, pathophysiological and clinical issues aspects in the Chinese population. In the early year of 2010’s, he published the first book in big volume on the subjects of special types of diabetes mellitus. 

Over 300 papers have been published during his professional career period.