The School of Basic Medicine of Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was created in 1907 and has had an illustrious past of more than a century. In 1993, the eight departments that had been the foundation of BMS were combined and rechristened as the School of Basic Medicine. Though modest in size, our influence on human health is considerable. BMS has provided training to more than 100,000 medical students, some of whom have gone on to become academicians, a minister, and two deputy ministers of the former Ministry of Health. In 2017, basic medicine was honored as a National Double First-Class Construction Discipline, and it was again recognized for its excellent performance in 2021.

Currently, BMS is composed of eleven departments and one center. Our institution has established six affiliated labs and centers at the state and provincial level including State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Severe Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Key Laboratory of Neurological Diseases (Ministry of Education), Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases (National Health Commission), Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Neurological Diseases, Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Drug Target Research and Pharmacodynamic Evaluation, and Innovation Center for Brain Medical Sciences (Ministry of Education). We are also the National Demonstration Center for Experimental Basic Medical Education and one of the national top-notch student training plan 2.0 bases in basic disciplines.

BMS is a renowned institution, boasting a considerable number of highly-skilled teachers and students. Over the past decade, it has welcomed 65 new scholars, 43 of whom have come from overseas. Our faculty is composed of 166 full-time members, 90% of whom have earned doctoral degrees, 77% having studied abroad and 13% having obtained their doctoral degrees from foreign universities. Our student body consists of 2021 individuals, including 1241 undergraduates, 612 graduates and 168 international students.

As an institution of higher learning that values research, BMS has received 400 million yuan from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) from 2014 to 2022 for 309 projects. Our faculty and students have regularly produced around 200 publications annually, with 90% of them appearing in international journals. Moreover, the efforts of our faculty have been rewarded with two first prizes and one second prize from the Natural Science Award of Hubei Province.

BMS puts a great emphasis on global interaction and contemplates ways to become more globally integrated. Since 2012, we have held the International Neuroscience Conference five times, the largest of its kind in Central China. Our faculty are highly committed to international cooperation and have taken part in numerous programs with foreign partners. We maintain five international joint research laboratories and are gradually becoming a globally recognized medical school.

Those remarkable accomplishments reaped by our faculty and students make us get where we are today. Going forward, we will continue to amass knowledge and influence, striving to shaping medicine in China and beyond.