On December 1, 2017, IDEAS Forum HKU-SJTU-HKSTP Translational Medicine Consortium was successfully held in Conference Room B13 of Qian Xuesen Library and Museum, Xuhui Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). Academician Cao Xuetao of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences was specially invited to give a lecture on “Research Progress in Immunity and Inflammatory Diseases” at the consortium.

The IDEAS Forum was presided over by Gao Weiyuan, Vice President of HKU, and Xu Yuhong, Professor of SJTU School of Pharmacy. Zhang Xianming, Director of the SJTU Translational Medicine Office, firstly gave a welcome speech and clarified that this forum was held to promote the research cooperation and complementation between the two universities in the field of new drug creation and to develop translational medicine projects with great prospects in the exploration and validation of new drugs, new diagnostic protocols and new therapeutic methods. Then, Gao Weiyuan delivered an opening speech, expressing that the establishment of the SJTU-HKU Translational Medicine Alliance aims to promote the application of new technologies to improve human health.

Prof. Cao Xuetao then gave a keynote speech on the history and development of immunology in China, summarized the current research focus of immunology in China, and said that the present bottleneck of immunology research mainly lies in technological breakthroughs.

After that, the 10 finalist teams presented their research ideas in turn and had a lively discussion with the judges, who commented on each team one by one. The forum finally selected two gold-award teams and three silver-award teams and awarded the other five finalist teams with finalist awards for encouragement.

As an important activity of this year's SJTU-HKU Translational Medicine Alliance, the IDEAS Forum has enhanced the cooperation between the two universities in new drug research and development and provided new ideas for deepening cooperation in the next stage.