Department of Immunology came into being in 1990 thanks to the efforts made by Prof. Xiuzhu ZHAO and Xinwei FENG at the former Department of Pathophysiology, and Prof. Aihua BI at the former Department of Microbiology. In order to better develop this discipline, the Immunology Section of Experimental Medicine Center, which was established by Prof. Gongzhi LIU, was merged into Department of Immunology in 1993.
Prof. Feili GONG and Prof. Guanxin SHEN used to serve as the department chair. Presently, Department of Immunology makes remarkable progress under the unremitting efforts of all staff members in personnel training, discipline construction, teaching and research.
Department of Immunology has 9 professors, 4 associate professors, 2 senior engineers and 5 engineers. 13 teachers once studied abroad. It was authorized to confer doctoral degrees in 1996 and was approved as a postdoctoral mobile station by Ministry of Education in the same year. In October 2000, Institute of Immunology of Tongji Medical College was formed by merging Department of Immunology, immunology-related clinical laboratories, Allergy Department, and so on.
Department of Immunology runs 7 courses for all medical students, including Medical Immunology, Basic Immunology, Experimental Immunology, Molecular Immunology, Advances in Immunology, Introduction to Scientific Research, Experimental Immunology for Postgraduates of Double First-class Clinical Degrees. Medical Immunology is given in English or bilingual education. By April 2018, it has trained over 200 doctoral students.
Immunology is an emerging discipline in medical science and life sciences. Faculty members at this department focus on the research of cellular and molecular immunity, immunogenetics, immunopathology, metabolism and immunity, tumor immunity, transplantation immunity, etc. They have undertaken nearly 100 projects such as international cooperation projects, 973 projects and 863 projects of Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, key projects and general programs of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, start-up funds for returnees from Ministry of Education, and key projects of Department of Science and Technology of Hubei Province and Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau.
More than 200 SCI articles have been published on leading journals including Nature, Nature Immunology, PNAS, Cancer Research, Journal of Immunology, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, European Journal of Immunology with its faculty members as the first author or corresponding authors.
Department of Immunology is a member unit of Key Laboratory of Organ Transplantation of Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health. It boasts a public technology platform where large-scale instruments are placed including flow cytometer, qPCR, and fluorescent inverted microscope. Relying on the research platform of Tongji Medical College, Department of Immunology is equipped with next-generation sequencing platform, protein chemistry platform, cell analyzer, two-photon microscopy and isotope laboratory. Those experimental platforms have laid a solid foundation for Department of Immunology to make scientific and technological innovation.
