The Ministry of Education has recently issued an approval to establish a frontier science center for disease molecular networks at Sichuan University. A frontier science center is at the core of the Everest Program of basic research in Chinese universities. The Ministry of Education emphases that the development of a frontier science center should be an important hand of world class university and first-class discipline construction. Aligning with the scheme of “double first-class” construction, the SCU Frontier Science Center is to gather innovative resources of all kinds, bring into play the advantage of subject groups, attract first-class talents, deepen the interdisciplinary integration and build a demonstration zone of system and mechanism reform. This center will also be a vanguard in achieving forward-looking basic research, becoming a leader of independent innovation in key areas. So far, the Ministry of Education has agreed to build seven frontier discipline centers of this kind nationwide.
The Frontier Science Center for Disease Molecular Networks is driven by the complex molecular network mechanism of disease development and is focused on the major strategic needs of Health China and so on. This center is supposed to construct a world first-class research institute, gather teams of high-level talents, strive to be original and promote the rapid development of basic medical research and clinical practice in China.
Drawing upon resources at Sichuan University, the center has put together a team of talents who integrate basic research and clinical research, using a multidisciplinary approach in the research of disease molecular networks. Up to now, this team has made achievements in disease large database, artificial intelligence, the study of important gene functions, disease molecular networks and basic research and transformation of biotherapy.
During the development of the center, the focus will be on prevention and treatmentof major diseases such as malignant tumors (for instance, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and breast cancer), and degenerative diseases of the elderly such as Alzheimer’s disease. Research will center around “establishment and intelligent analytic application of disease biomedical large database”, “disease key gene function, protein structure and regulation network”, “disease-related stem cell proliferation and differentiation and molecular control network”, “disease single-cell multi-group and molecular control network and the analysis of disease molecular network transformation” and so forth. It is expected to provide new clinical prevention strategies and play a leading role in the field of disease molecular network research in the world. The development of this center will also help the construction of first-class academic subjects and the national frontier science research base where top-level talents can be trained and research findings can be applied to clinical practice.
