Source: The Third Affiliated Hospital
Written by: Office of Discipline Construction & International Cooperation
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On September 16-18, Dr. Kenrad Nelson, Dr. Chloe Thio and Dr. Stephan Ehrhardt from Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) visited The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, and discussed the joint project "Prevention of vertical hepatitis B virus transmission in China – feasibility study".

On September 16, Vice President of The Third Affiliated Hospital Dr. Rong Limin met with the JHM guests. The directors and doctors from the Infectious Disease Department and Obstetrics Division, Dr. Gao Zhiliang, Dr. Hou Hongying, Dr. Lin Chaoshuang, Dr. Yin Yuzhu as well as other administrative colleagues attended the meeting. Ms. Li Yeyu gave a brief introduction of the hospital. Dr. Gan Weiqiang and Dr. Han Zhengyan introduced the current status of the Infectious Diseases Department and Obstetrics Division respectively. The JHM delegates Dr. Chloe Thio, Dr. Kenrad Nelson and Dr. Stephan Ehrhardt introduced their research areas and interests. The delegation visited clinic of the Obstetrics Division, clinic of the Infection Diseases Department, wards of hospital and liver disease laboratory accompanied by the hospital personnel. The two sides enhanced mutual understanding through the preliminary discussion and visit.

From the afternoon of September 16 to 17, members of both sides had in-depth discussion on joint project. On September 18, Director of the Drug Clinical Trial Office Huang Qian and representative of the drug sponsor Gilead also took part in the meeting. They discussed in detail about the ethical review and funding issues of the project. After three days of efforts, the meeting achieved preliminary consensuses on the mode of cooperation, project plan, project budget, the ownership of the intellectual property rights, the project ethics review application as well as drug funding. The next detailed steps of cooperation will be further discussed through the telephone meeting.

The project of "Prevention of vertical hepatitis B virus transmission in China – feasibility study" was selected by the cooperation leadership group between Sun Yat-Sen University and Johns Hopkins University. It is one of the five selected "seed funding" projects. The delegation's visit not only reached cooperative intent and consensus about this project, but also built a solid foundation for the next step of collaboration.