Background

The "111" plan, jointly organized and implemented by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education, is an important plan for the country to promote the construction of "double first-class", a landmark platform representing the level of discipline construction and international scientific research cooperation of universities, and also the highest national platform for the intellectual introduction of universities. The overall goal of the "111 plan" is to target at the forefront of international discipline development, combine the international frontier level of higher education or national key development of disciplines, on the basis of advantageous characteristic disciplines, on the platform of national, provincial and ministerial key scientific research bases, from the world's top 100 universities, research institutions or world-class disciplinary teams. Introduce and gather 1,000 overseas top academic masters and a large number of academic backbones, and focus on building 100 world-class disciplinary innovation bases.

In August 2017, Professor Chen Xingzhen of our University and Academician Marek Michalak of the University of Alberta, Canada, jointly led the declaration of "Cell regulation and molecular medicine" discipline innovation and intelligence base (referred to as "111" base) was approved. Our university is the first provincial university in Hubei Province to be approved as a national "111" base. Up to now, our school is the only unit selected in the "biomedicine discipline" among universities in Hubei Province.

The makeup of the Center

The Center is located on the 7th and 8th floors of the Light Industry Building, affiliated with the School of Biological Engineering and Food Science, and composed of 9 principal investigators (Drs Xing-Zhen Chen, Yajie Tang, Zhengding Su, Binlei Liu, Xianmin Xia, Kanggong Hu, Honghao Sun, Weihong Xie, and Jun Wang) and their team members. The overseas partners of the Center are world renowned researchers from Canada, USA, Germany and Denmark, with the leading investigator Dr Marek Michalak, a professor at the University of Alberta and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Other overseas researchers include Drs Declan Ali (U of Alberta), Joel Weiner (U of Alberta, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada), Veit Flockerzi (U of Saarland, Fellow of the German National Academy of Science), Consolato Sergi (U of Alberta), Leonides Tsiokas (U of Oklahoma), Youmei Zhang (Case Western Reserve U), Minghui Zou (Georgia State U), Yan Xu (National Research Council of Canada), Shenghan Lai (Johns Hopkins U), and Thomas Andresen (Technical U of Denmark).

Research and funding

Hubei University of Technology Cell Regulation and Molecular Drug "111" introduction base, research ideas are mainly from the cell (model)- regulation (mechanism)- drug (development) three levels of research and exploration, its main research directions are: 1) cell regulation and molecular mechanism; 2) Protein function and drug screening; 3) Natural, targeted and small molecule drugs. Relying on the collaborative research and joint research of Chinese and foreign scientific research teams in the base, we will strive to spend 5-10 years to systematically study the cell regulatory networks, signal transduction pathways and the mechanism of action of drug targets in major diseases, and strive to make major breakthroughs in the discovery and treatment of targeted drugs, antibody drugs and natural drugs for these diseases.

Dr. Jingfeng Tang (Director, email: tangjingfeng@hbut.edu.cn ).