Scientific Research Leads to a Rapport Relationship with Clinical Practice

The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University places a great emphasis on scientific research. An experimental centre of 1300 square meters has been constructed for the first phase of the construction, while the second phase construction will complete a scientific research building of 100,000 square meters by 2020. When in fully operation, the Hospital will invest more than 4% of its GDP into scientific research, with full-time scientific research personnel at 10- 25% of total hospital staff.

The Hospital will also implement a relatively independent management model between scientific research and clinical practice, allowing clinical practitioners and scientific research personnel to focus on their expertise respectively. With this management model, clinical practitioners may recognize clinical problems for scientific research, resulting in solutions for better clinical services through scientific research targeted on these clinically practical needs.  The Hospital therefore focuses on interpreting research outcomes to actual clinical practice, which is critical for promoting the transformation of scientific research results into downstream industries. Meanwhile, this process will integrate cooperation and exchange with world-class medical research institutions. Consequently, a mutual development in scientific research and clinical practice will help enhance the competence of Shenzhen in medical science and technology innovation, forming a new highland for the medical industry.

Proactively Building a Public Service Platform

Regarding the construction of scientific research platforms, the hospital is actively establishing a public service platform oriented towards both the Hospital and the whole society but also featured as multidisciplinary, high-standard and interactive. For instance, the public service platform will be linked with various research institutes including a public biological sample bank, public experimental technology centers (including Cell Biology Technology Platform, Genomics Technology Platform, Proteomics Technology Platform, Metabolomics Technology Platform, Pathology and Image Technology Platform), Technology Transfer and Industrialization Center, and Animal Experiment Center.

The central laboratory in the Hospital has installed key instruments for molecular biology (including PCR machines, microbial culture, gene cloning, nucleic acid and protein purification and identification systems, enzyme kinetics, and purity measurement of optically active substances, ice makers, dry ice cabinets, liquid nitrogen cans, micro-equivalent, etc.), cell biology (including stem cell culture, cell bank, centrifugal smear machine, etc.), imaging system (including fluorescence microscope, confocal microscope, etc.), analysis system (including HPLC, flow cytometry Instruments, cell sorters, microplate readers, etc.), histology systems (including cryosection machines, paraffin microtomes, staining systems, etc.), animal experiments (isoflurane anesthesia machines, behavioral analysis systems, etc.). These sets of equipment enable various experiments in molecular biology, cell biology and translational medicine, which also accommodate the needs of different disciplines to complete multiple scientific research projects.

'Six Plus One' - the Layout of Scientific Research and Construction

The Hospital is currently working on establishing seven scientific research centres and one big data centre. Namely, these research centres are Digestive Medicine Research Institute, Brain Health Disease Research Platform, Immunology Research Platform, Hematology Research Center, Precision Medicine Research Center and Tumor Drug Resistance Reversal Research Center. Notably, the Clinical and Medical Research Big Data Centre is jointly established with the Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences (Nutrition and Health Institute) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Academician Guoping Zhao, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been invited to become the chief scientist and aims to make the Big Data Centre of the Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, the benchmark of the National Medical Big Data Center. It will actualise a setting where a seamless connection between the clinical practice and scientific research can be established, which is also the foundation for carrying out precision medical research. Additionally, the Hospital is proactively seeking cooperation for building two Nobel Laboratories.

Maintaining an Atmosphere that Stimulates Better Scientific Research

In creating an academic atmosphere in the Hospital, the Scientific Research and International Exchange Department proactively invites well-known national and international experts and scholars for visiting and academic exchanges. More than 40 domestic and foreign scholars have visited the Hospital for academic exchanges since 9^th March 2017.

Regarding academic exchange, many international clinical, medical and research experts are invited to participate every second month at the 'Master Lecture', a high-level academic exchange. The event has attracted numerous visitors, audience and social media. At these events, each expert generously brings and shares their insight from either scientific research or clinical work, which imparts the most advanced knowledge in the academic world and creates an excellent academic atmosphere. At the same time, such exchanges can tremendously benefit the educational and scientific research activities conducted in the Hospital and widen the channels for better local and international collaboration.

Paying Great Attention to the High-level Scientific Research Talents Reserve

By adopting a global recruitment policy, the Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University tries recruiting research talents internationally from renowned research institutes.

As of now, the Hospital has reached cooperation with many well-known scholars from overseas. We have officially recruited one talent from the ‘National Thousand Talents Program’, 14 talents form the 'Hundred Talents Program' of Sun Yat-sen University and 24 full-time scientific researchers. Furthermore, we are currently introducing one talent from the ‘National Thousand Talents Program’, eight talents from the 'Hundred Talents Program' of Sun Yat-sen University and six full-time scientific researchers.

The recruited scholars are from the most renowned scientific institutions, including Cornell University, the University of Oklahoma, the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, the University of California at Berkeley, King's College London, Nottingham College, the University of Birmingham, the Francis Crick Institute. The Sanit-Louis Medical School of the University of Paris, France, the National Center for Molecular Medicine of Max-Delbrück, and the National University of Singapore, respectively.

After these high-level talents settle in the Hospital, they will rapidly improve the research level of the Hospital. They also, in turn, serve as a part of the talent resource in Shenzhen for promoting the development of regional high-tech industries such as health services and biomedicine. Therefore, this reciprocity is ensured to be significantly beneficial.