Discipline Overview
     The Department of Systems Biology for Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University is a research and education platform of systems biology catering to the area of medicine. As a new interdisciplinary platform established in May 2014, its development in early stage will rely on research foundations laid by research teams from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences. The Institute of Biomedical Sciences put a lot of effort in establishment of a biomedical research center in phase III of 985 Program. This center employs a proteomics and systems biology team built during phase II, an original new drug and structural biology team and other related research groups, presenting excellent foundation for medical systems biology in research teams and academic achievements. When establishing the new department, the research teams have summed up three research directions: (1) proteomics and disease markers, (2) bioinformatics and medical systems biology, (3) structural biology and small active molecules related to targets. Related work teams are also built.
Current situation of the research team
      The Department of Systems Biology for Medicine now employs 15 teachers including 6 professors, 7 associate professors and 2 teachers with medium-grade professional title. All of them have doctor degrees and 95% of them have studied overseas. This team includes 1 winner (Xu Yanhui) of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 1 chief scientist (Yang Pengyuan) of 973 Program, 2 Cross-Century/New Century Talents (Xu Yanhui and Wen Wenyu) of Ministry of Education, 1 Principal Investigator (Xu Yanhui) of Science and Technology Committee of Shanghai, 1 Dawn Scholar (Xu Yanhui) of Board of Education of Shanghai, 4 Scholars (Xu Yanhui, Liu Lei, Yu Hongxiu and Yang Huirong) of Pujiang Talent Program, 2 winners of (Liu Feng and Wen Wenyu) Shanghai S&T Youth Rising-star Program. The Department not only builds up its own research team, but also invites 5 full-time professors overseas, laying a solid foundation for research team and increasing the quality of the scientific research.
Education
       For medical systems biology, an emerging interdiscipline, the following courses have been offered: Concept and Application of Systems Biology for graduate students from related majors and Introduction to Set-up of Scientific Research and Introduction to Epigenetics as summer FIST graduate courses.
Since 2009,  20 master students and 70 Ph.D students have enrolled in related research groups. There are 45 students in Ph.D candidates currently. Since 2009, 20 of them have obtained Ph.D and 15 of them have obtained master degree. Graduate students keep on publishing high level papers and the number of papers published in leading journals like Cell, Molecular Cell steadily increases, showing huge scientific research potential.
Scientific research
     The Department of Systems Biology for Medicine focuses on researches of proteomics and disease markers, bioinformatics and medical systems biology, and structural biology and small active molecules.
Since 2009, 30  projects (national and provincial/ ministerial level) with funds of RMB 1 billion sponsored by 973 Program, 863 Program, Major Infectious Disease Program, Key Novel Medicine Development Program, Natural Science Fund of China (NSFC), Board of Education of Shanghai and Science and Technology Committee of Shanghai have been approved. Among 151 SCI indexed papers published since 2009, ? papers with Fudan University as the first author unit and have impact factors higher than 5.0. Most of the papers are published in famous journals like Cell, Molecular Cell, AngewChemInt Ed, Genes & Development, Anal Chem, J Proteome Res, Lab on Chip, PNAS, Cell Research, EMBO J, etc.