1. Establishment and development
Shanghai Institute of Hematology was established in April 1987 and its predecessor was Pathophysiologic Research Section of School of Basic Medicine of Shanghai Second Medical University and Department of Hematology. Through ten years’ arduous, unsurpassed struggles of scientists of two generations headed by Prof. Wang Zhenyi (academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering) and Prof. Chen Zhu (academician and deputy president of Chinese Academy of Sciences) the Institute has become a multi-disciplinary research institution with such disciplines as molecular biology, cellular genetics, cellular biology, thrombus and hemostasis, cellular morphology, clinical hematology, basic hematology, leukemia, transplantation of bone marrow and rheology of thrombus of deep vein.
　

2. Research directions and content
Shanghai Institute of Hematology has made further progress in clinical and basic research of APL and pushed the reasonable clinical application and discussion of the effect of mechanism of ATRA in treatment of APL, discovering a big number of functional genes regulated and controlled by vitamin A acid, initially putting forward molecular control network of vitamin A acid induction differentiation, discovering that arsenic trioxide can be used not only as the first-choice drug of recurrent APT but also a drug for treating malignant lymphoid proliferative disease as suggested by the experimental result and revealing by using the method of modern cellular and molecular biology that it is by regulating and changing APL-related genes and/or its protein expression products that arsenic trioxide causes apoptosis of malignant cells. The Institute was the first internationally to establish gene-transforming mice with APL modified chromosomal translocation, providing an animal model of the overall level for pathogenesis and drug screening of leukemia. In respect of research of genome the Institute took the lead in establishing a technical system of high flux automatic sequence, genomic screening, advanced gene location and large-scale application of science of information of genome, obtaining more than 10,000 gene segments for hemopoietic cell expression, initially clarifying the gene expression maps of hemopoietic stem and progenitor cells and on this basis obtaining cDNA 279 genes of entire length of important function, among which 64 genes have got the application numbers. 10 papers on these research fruits have been published in such international core journals as “Blood”, “PNAS”, “NCI” and “Leukemia”. The researchers have delivered reports on invitation at the union conference of International-European Hematology Association, conference of HUGO and the first international work conference of advanced genomics, showing that these research fruits were highly evaluated by the international academic circles.
Shanghai Institute of Hematology will on the previous basis continuously deepen its research of cellular differentiation, apoptosis induction of blood malignant tumor and on the basis of research of leukemia-causing gene structural function, screen and design drugs of a new type, striving to make a new progress in targeted treatment of malignant tumor. The year of 1999 is a key year for the development of our country’s human genomics. We will further speed up the work system of differentiation and induction of genes of leukemia, separation and clone normal stem and progenitor cell functions and establish determination of gene expression maps in batches and initially establish advanced technical means of gene function screening and simultaneously make a new breakthrough in location and clone of diseased genes.