Source: SYSU-JHU Collaboration Program
Written by: Chen Jingxue
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On December 2, 2015, the Experience Sharing Forum of Sun Yat-sen University & John Hopkins University Collaboration Program (SYSU-JHU Collaboration) was held in the Lecture Hall of Medical Science Building on North Campus of SYSU, attracting over a hundred of doctors, teachers as well as medical students. Prof. Li Mengfeng and Prof. Ma Jun, Vice Presidents of SYSU, attended the events, accompanied by the leadership members of SYSU-JHU Collaboration, Prof. Liang Dan, Deputy Director of Office of Scientific Research and Prof. Zhang Qi, Deputy Director of Office of International Cooperation & Exchange.

SYSU-JHU Collaboration is a two-year cooperation program focused on the field of clinical and translational medicine research between the two universities. It officially started in 2013 and has accomplished its goals for Phase I collaboration in September 2015.

The experience sharing forum was designed with three sessions: program introduction, experience sharing by visiting scholars and interactive questions and answers. In the first session, Prof. Li Mengfeng briefly presented the main cooperative contents and developmental effectiveness between the two universities’ collaboration with the aim of promoting clinical and translational medicine researches.

While in the second session, five visiting scholars shared their learning experience in the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) as well as their working progress in the clinical research field back to their original schools or hospitals. It is worth noting that the educational training is one of the main cooperative contents in SYSU-JHU Collaboration, with both local training and oversea study included. It is hoped that such cultivation of talents would facilitate massive growth of international standardized clinical and translational researches in the future. The educational training has covered varies aspects related to clinical researches. For the oversea study part, SYSU-JHU Collaboration has sent different specialists to study and conduct researches at JHU.
  

Audience listening to presentations

The first speaker was Dr. Chen Kai from Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital. In 2013, he went to JHU for one year study. During his sharing, he talked about the unique communication methods he participated in research discussions or conferences in the United States. Furthermore, he introduced the data base of breast tumor he is currently working on. Inspired from the National Cancer Database and Seer database in which he accessed in JHU, Dr. Chen Kai developed the breast tumor database of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital with his team after coming back to China. So far, they have established cooperative relations with a number of major hospitals in Guangdong province, intending to cover their data resources provincially.

Another representative of the one-year research fellows was Dr. Xu Li, who studied at JHU from 2014 to 2015. As a senior faculty member of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, she mainly shared her understandings of the differences and gaps between two universities’ educational trainings and research procedures in clinical research. Moreover, as a member of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the Cancer Center, Dr. Xu Li shared her insights into the supervision of research integrity and research ethics in JHU.

A successful clinical research requires not only the expertise of clinical researchers but also a variety of technology support from specialists in other fields. Associate Professor You Na from the School of Mathematics & Computational Science represented the one-year methodology research fellow to share her academic exchange experience at JHU. She demonstrated her real-life experiences of combining statistics with clinical research cases and their impacts on her career path of both research and teaching. She also mentioned the Research Electronic Data Capture (RED Cap) tool that she has introduced to SYSU after coming back from JHU. RED Cap is a user-friendly web tool that can build and customize database for researchers. According to Associate Professor You Na, the RED Cap has already served 7 Principal Investigators in clinical research so far. Moreover, the number of active users has risen to 160 in the past year.
 

Associate Professor You Na sharing her experiences

The fourth speaker was Dr. Chen Xiang, Director of the Clinical Research Center of Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center. In 2014, he spent 3 months at JHU to study the management experience of clinical research center. Through vivid stories, Dr. Chen Xiang briefly introduced the construction and management principles of Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR). Based on his observation and reflection on ICTR, he started a “pre-test” in the clinical research center he is working at. With joint efforts, Dr. Chen Xiang and his team established a platform named “clinical research gas station”, offering service such as project incubation, educational training, technology support and program promotion.

The last speaker was the head research nurse Ms. Ge Jieying from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. In 2013, she went to JHU to study the coordinator’s work for one month. Although the learning period was fairly short, she gained great experience during her intensive study at JHU. After she came back, Ms. Ge Jieying has helped to launch various training programs for coordinators in the Cancer Center and other hospitals.

After the inspiring sharing by visiting scholars, the forum ended with the question and answer session.