Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Prevention and Treatment, State Ministry of Education
[History and Mission] Housed in the largest breast cancer clinical center in China, the Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Prevention and Therapy at Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital was approved by the Ministry of Education of China in 2004. This is the only state-level key laboratory focusing on breast cancer research and clinical care. The mission for the key laboratory is to carry out integrated and cross-disciplinary research in order to provide novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.
[Clinical Resources] The key laboratory has an integrated breast cancer prevention and treatment system with seven clinical departments, including three surgical oncology departments, one breast reconstruction department, one breast medical oncology department, one breast cancer radiology department and one breast cancer pathology department. It also has a molecular diagnostic core laboratory. There are 500 in-patient beds, >7200 cases of breast cancer surgery and >380,000 outpatient visits annually. More than 80,000 cases of breast cancer data base have been established. We have one of the largest breast cancer tissue banks with more than 250,000 paraffin specimens and more than 7,000 fresh tissues.
[Core Facilities] The laboratory covers a research area of approximately 8,000 m2 with 8 core technical platforms in which major equipment are open to researchers to use: the cell biology technology platform, the molecular biology technology platform, the biochip technology platform, the biological therapy technology platform, the molecular epidemiology technology platform, the experimental oncology technology platform, breast cancer tissue bank and the serum sample database.
[Research Teams] The laboratory has 36 principal investigators across the hospital and the University.
[Research Achievements] In recent years, the laboratory has published research papers in top journals such as Nature, Cell, Cancer Cell, Molecular Cell, JAMA Oncology, Annals of Oncology, Nature Genetics, and PNAS, and won the Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Special Award and Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation and other prestigious awards.
[Scientific Leaders]
Ping Wang, MD
Bo Xu, MD, PhD