archiveGastrointestinal Tumor Diagnosis and Treatment Center / Pancreatic Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Center · Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University
Gastrointestinal Tumor Diagnosis and Treatment Center / Pancreatic Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Center
The Digestive Oncology Diagnosis and Treatment Center of the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University was founded in August 2022 and was the first institution in Shandong Province to establish a digestive oncology diagnosis and treatment center. Since its establishment, the department has been committed to standardized, individualized comprehensive treatment of common digestive tumors and has formed an academic team with gastrointestinal surgery, hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, gastroenterology, radiotherapy, medical imaging, pathology and other departments, supporting one another and developing together. Relying on the Center and the only key clinical research laboratory for pancreatic diseases approved by the Shandong Provincial Health Commission, the Pancreatic Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Center was established in 2024. Led by Professor Ren He, a National Distinguished Young Scholar and Taishan Scholar, it integrates internal medicine, surgery, a clinical research ward, a tumor immunology and cellular therapy center, and a Phase I clinical research ward. Its purpose is to provide standardized, scientific and comprehensive one-stop diagnosis and treatment services; its vision is to improve the capacity for diagnosing and treating pancreatic diseases and benefit the broad population of patients with pancreatic diseases. It is a high-level, comprehensive, research-oriented department focused on the research and development of cutting-edge diagnosis and treatment technologies for digestive tumors, especially pancreatic tumors. The Center is a deputy-chair institution of the Pancreatic Diseases Committee, the Digestive Oncology Big Data and Real-World Research Committee, and the Specialty Committee for Heterogeneous Individualized Treatment of Digestive Tumors of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, and is the chair institution of the Precision Medicine Branch of the Qingdao Medical Association. It has repeatedly hosted major academic conferences, enhancing the academic influence of both the discipline and the hospital while also promoting the improvement of Qingdao’s academic level in oncology.
2. Talent Team
The Digestive Oncology Diagnosis and Treatment Center/Pancreatic Disease Center has strong human resources and has developed into a high-level medical, teaching and research group with complete specialties, headed by a distinguished young scholar and supported by many highly qualified young and middle-aged technical professionals. It currently has 9 full-time clinical physicians, 8 full-time research staff, 7 postdoctoral researchers in training, and approximately 25 doctoral and master’s students in training. The department has established good cooperative relationships with Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai and other institutions, creating favorable external opportunities for development and favorable conditions for staff to study and improve elsewhere.
3. Professional Features
Guided by integrated medicine, the Center brings together professional teams from abdominal surgery, pathology, gastroenterology, oncology, interventional medicine, radiotherapy and imaging to build a specialized team for difficult-to-treat malignant tumors, principally pancreatic disease. It explores potential mechanisms through clinical phenomena, advances clinical practice through mechanistic research, and supports the translation of new drugs through clinical trials. Its professional features lie in integrating endoscopic diagnosis, medical treatment, radiotherapy, surgery and clinical trials into a one-stop multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment model, thereby developing individualized diagnosis and treatment plans for patients.
(1) Endoscopic diagnosis: The Center is equipped with advanced endoscopic technologies, including electronic gastroscopy and colonoscopy, enteroscopy, endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS), EUS-guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy (EUS-FNA), EUS elastography, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), capsule endoscopy and detailed endoscopic examination, including chromoendoscopy, narrow-band imaging and magnifying endoscopy. These procedures enable precise diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and other digestive-tract tumors and greatly improve detection of early digestive-tract cancer. Its level is leading in Shandong and advanced nationally.
(2) Medical/systemic treatment: The Center specializes in drug, comprehensive and individualized treatment of pancreatic, gastric, colorectal and esophageal cancers and other digestive-system tumors. Medical treatment involves chemotherapy, molecular targeted therapy, immunotherapy and biological therapy. Through standardized, cutting-edge treatment regimens, it strives to provide each patient with the optimal treatment strategy and the best medical service. It also conducts drug clinical trials guided by clinical problems and based on mechanistic research. The Center has dedicated physicians, project-responsible physicians and a professional nursing team with strong GCP awareness. It can complete clinical-trial protocol planning, project initiation and operation in pancreatic, gastric, colorectal and esophageal cancers. Amid strong national support for pharmaceutical research, development and innovation, the Center is committed to rapid translation of high-quality results, releasing clinical resources, supporting coordinated innovation in China’s pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, and enabling more Chinese innovative medicines to benefit patients.
(3) Radiotherapy: The Center provides various radiotherapy modalities for digestive-system tumors, including preoperative neoadjuvant, postoperative adjuvant and radical radiotherapy for locally recurrent gastric cancer; neoadjuvant radiotherapy for esophageal and gastroesophageal-junction cancer; neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy and postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy for rectal cancer; and neoadjuvant radiotherapy for pancreatic cancer. It also provides concurrent and sequential chemoradiotherapy, radiosensitization and other comprehensive radiotherapy treatments for digestive-tract cancers to improve treatment efficacy. In conjunction with the Radiotherapy Technology Center, it has complete equipment and strong technical capabilities, including five accelerators—among them the Varian TrueBeam, fourth-generation TOMO and Trilogy, which are among the world’s most advanced linear accelerators—two German Siemens large-aperture spiral CT simulators and multiple TPS planning systems. It provides 3DCRT, IMRT, VMAT and other radiotherapy modalities, as well as specialized technologies including IGRT, SBRT and respiratory gating. The combined use of advanced radiotherapy technologies and different modalities improves tumor control while reducing damage to surrounding normal tissues and greatly reducing radiotherapy-related adverse effects, thereby achieving “precise radiotherapy.”
(4) Surgical treatment: The Center routinely performs standard pancreaticoduodenectomy, pancreaticoduodenectomy with combined vascular resection and extended pancreaticoduodenectomy, pylorus-preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy, local pancreatic-tumor resection and total pancreatectomy. It also performs artery-first pancreaticoduodenectomy, radical pancreatic-cancer resection with combined nerve-plexus resection, and extended radical resection of pancreatic-body cancer with combined celiac-trunk resection. It explores new technologies and methods such as enhanced recovery after pancreatic surgery and was among the earlier centers in China to perform various pancreatic operations assisted by the da Vinci robot and total laparoscopy, thereby developing distinctive features that combine professionalization, standardization, individualization and diversification. It focuses on solving the major and difficult problems of low pancreatic-tumor resection rates, high mortality and high postoperative-complication rates. Innovative improvements to the pancreatic surgical approach have increased surgical safety and resection rates, and significantly improved long-term survival after pancreatic-cancer surgery.
(5) Patient services: The Center provides one-stop whole-course management. While clinicians provide patients with optimal comprehensive diagnosis and treatment, the nursing team follows a patient-centered service philosophy and offers professional nursing techniques and compassionate service. Its work includes whole-course blood-glucose and nutritional management for pancreatic-tumor patients, application of symptom management based on patient-reported outcomes in patients with pancreatic cancer, improving the quality and efficiency of oncology nursing practice, and health education on pancreatic diseases. It continually improves patients’ care experience and satisfaction.
4. Research and Teaching
The team focuses on difficult clinical problems in pancreatic disease and has carried out extensive, highly productive work on the biological progression from pancreatitis to pancreatic cancer, distant metastasis of pancreatic cancer and mechanisms of the pancreatic-cancer immune microenvironment. It innovatively proposed the concept of a regulatory-T-cell-like subset in pancreatic epithelial cells and received high recognition from international peers. Translational research includes nanomedicine development and individualized treatment; several targeted drugs for the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer are in preclinical or clinical-trial stages. During the past five years, the team has published more than 50 papers on pancreatic diseases and digestive-tract tumors in multiple journals, with more than 2,000 cumulative citations and an H-index of 30. Some research findings were incorporated into the Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer as class IA recommendations. Team members currently undertake one National Distinguished Young Scholars Fund project, one key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, one Taishan Scholar talent-specific project, one major basic-research project of Shandong Province, and five general and young-investigator projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The team has received two first prizes for provincial- or ministerial-level scientific and technological progress and one second prize for Qingdao scientific and technological progress.
5. Visit Guide
Department location: 6th floor, Building 1, Laoshan Campus
Consultation telephone: 82915291
Featured diagnostic and treatment technologies: individualized diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic tumors; immunotherapy and biological therapy for digestive tumors; precision radiotherapy for digestive tumors.
Diagnosis and treatment of digestive tumors and pancreatic diseases, among other conditions.
刘自民
Chief Physician
Clinical interests
Specializes in the comprehensive treatment of esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, gastrointestinal stromal tumors, and neuroendocrine tumors.
周斌
Associate Chief Physician
Clinical interests
Diagnosis and treatment of hepatobiliary-pancreatic surgical diseases and retroperitoneal diseases.
宋孟锜
Associate Chief Physician
Clinical interests
Laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery for benign and malignant diseases of the pancreas, liver and biliary tract; diagnosis and surgical treatment of cystic pancreatic tumors; enhanced recovery after pancreatic/liver surgery (ERAS); and comprehensive treatment of pancreatic cancer throughout the disease course and of intermediate- and advanced-stage malignant tumors of the pancreas and liver.
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Laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery for benign and malignant diseases of the pancreas, liver and biliary tract; diagnosis and surgical treatment of cystic pancreatic tumors; enhanced recovery after pancreatic/liver surgery (ERAS); and comprehensive treatment of pancreatic cancer throughout the disease course and of intermediate- and advanced-stage malignant tumors of the pancreas and liver.
胡维煜
Associate Chief Physician
Clinical interests
Minimally invasive and comprehensive treatment of pancreatic cancer and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.