Haematology

The Department of Hematology of Peking University Shenzhen Hospital was established in 2002, approved as a key hospital specialty in 2005, and granted admission qualification as a hospital for unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplantation by the Ministry of Health in 2007. It is qualified to perform allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation under the national management standards for restricted technologies, and is an authorized unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplantation unit of the China Marrow Donor Program and the Taiwan Tzu Chi Marrow Donor Registry. In 2016, through the Shenzhen medical and health Three Names Project, the department introduced the hematologic disease team led by Academician Huang Xiaojun of the Institute of Hematology, Peking University. The Li Anzhen Hematologic Disease Research Center was established in 2022. In 2025, the department was approved as a construction project for a Guangdong Provincial Clinical Key Specialty.

Department Size and Team The department currently has 52 medical and nursing staff members and 6 full-time research personnel. There are 19 clinical physicians, including 3 chief physicians, 5 associate chief physicians, and 7 attending physicians. There are 7 doctoral degree holders and 9 master’s degree holders; 3 physicians are supervisors of master’s students. The Department of Hematology wards include the hematology treatment ward, day-treatment ward, and transplant ward. There are 78 open beds, comprising 60 general beds, 8 day-ward beds, and 10 Class 100 laminar-flow ward beds. The treatment ward has 12 simple laminar-flow beds and 2 independent special-needs private rooms equipped with mobile air-disinfection workstations. These facilities provide an all-environment protective setting for patients with severe immune dysfunction, including patients with leukemia, aplastic anemia, and those following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, thereby reducing the incidence of infection. The ward is also equipped with a blood-cell apheresis room and 3 blood-cell separators, including advanced systems such as the Fresenius COM.TEC and Terumo Spectra Optia. The hospital’s central laboratory is equipped with ultracentrifuges, multifunctional microplate readers, a molecular interaction detection system, a digital slide scanning system, a small-animal irradiator, a micro-CT, a small-animal X-ray machine, a small-animal in vivo imaging system, a laser confocal microscope, a high-content imaging system, a laser microdissection system, a fluorescence microscope, a Beckman Coulter CytoFLEX flow cytometer, high-performance liquid chromatography, and other equipment and hardware facilities. A systematic biobank of hematologic disease biospecimens, including bone marrow, peripheral blood, and tissue, has been established.

Specialty Diagnosis and Treatment Features The department has specialty outpatient clinics for leukemia, myeloma, lymphoma, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and clinical trials of new drugs. It was the first in the city to provide a day-treatment model for patients with myeloma and lymphoma. Centered on the three major advantageous diseases of leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, and driven by two cutting-edge technologies—hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and new cellular immunotherapies, including chimeric antigen receptor T-cell immunotherapy CAR-T—the department is vigorously advancing specialty development. The department has established a precision, full-course diagnosis and treatment platform for leukemia, myeloma, and lymphoma, including a system for precise diagnosis and prognostic stratification. It uses serology, cytomorphology, flow cytometry, pathological cytology, molecular pathological diagnosis, PETCT and other imaging methods, genetics, and other techniques. Based on molecular classification, clinical staging, and international prognostic indices, it has built a comprehensive prognostic-stratification model. Through multidisciplinary collaboration, it has established an early joint diagnosis and treatment system for disease diagnosis and difficult-to-treat diseases across specialties, providing comprehensive and optimized diagnosis and treatment for patients, particularly elderly patients and those with critical illness, numerous comorbidities and complications, or complex disease. The multidisciplinary team for the lymphohematopoietic system routinely performs comprehensive treatments, including B-ultrasound- or CT-guided tissue and organ pathological biopsy; fiberoptic bronchoscopy-guided needle biopsy of mediastinal lymph nodes and pulmonary masses; minimally invasive thoracoscopic biopsy of pulmonary masses; bedside continuous ultrafiltration; therapeutic plasma exchange; surgical decompression for acute spinal cord compression; minimally invasive PKP surgery for myeloma spinal vertebral bodies; radiotherapy for lymphoma and plasmacytoma; novel-probe radionuclide PETCT imaging of myeloma and amyloidosis; treatment of multisystem complications after chemotherapy; pre-chemotherapy ovarian-function and fertility preservation for women; and clinical pharmacy and nutritional guidance. The department provides patients with continuous, patient-centered care and develops an individualized treatment strategy and full disease-cycle management plan for every patient.

Introduction to Diagnosis and Treatment Technologies 1. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation technology: Since 2002, under the guidance of Professor Guo Nailan, a renowned expert from Peking University, the department has performed its first hematopoietic stem cell transplant and has now developed mature capabilities in multiple types of transplantation, including fully matched related-donor, haploidentical HLA-mismatched, unrelated allogeneic, and unrelated umbilical cord blood transplantation. More than 400 hematopoietic stem cell transplants of various types have been completed to date. Among them, the most difficult haploidentical transplants have gradually increased as a proportion of all transplants and now account for more than 55%. In 2017, through the Shenzhen Three Names Project, the department introduced the team of Academician Huang Xiaojun from the Institute of Hematology, Peking University. Under his leadership, the department has accumulated extensive technical experience in high-difficulty haploidentical transplantation, and the disease-free survival rate of haploidentical transplantation is close to the advanced domestic level. In 2024, the department successfully performed haploidentical transplantation in 2 patients over 70 years of age with acute leukemia. The diseases treated by transplantation have expanded from initially high-risk leukemia to refractory or relapsed leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndrome, severe aplastic anemia, and other benign and malignant diseases of the hematopoietic system. 2. Novel cellular immunotherapy: The department has established a cellular therapy platform and system devoted to the research, development, and application of cutting-edge cellular therapies. It performs novel-target CAR-T therapy, composite dual-target CAR-T therapy, CAR-T-bridged allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and basic-to-clinical translational research, thereby building a collaborative innovation model for scientific research support. The clinical research and clinical application system covers the entire process, from cell collection, cryopreservation, and testing to reinfusion and post-reinfusion management. 3. The department has successfully conducted multiple clinical studies that were global or domestic firsts, treating nearly 80 patients with hematologic diseases in total and greatly enhancing its reputation and technical strength in the treatment of refractory hematologic malignancies. It has achieved several breakthrough firsts worldwide. It successfully completed the world’s first CAR-T cell therapy for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, Sézary syndrome, completely eliminating the patient’s tumor cells within 28 days. It also successfully completed the world’s first composite dual-target CAR-T cell therapy, CD19/BCMA, while achieving clinical cures of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and refractory systemic lupus erythematosus. These achievements were presented at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting, ASH, and in published papers, attracting international academic attention. In recent years, the department has explored a treatment model in which allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is bridged after CART cell therapy for relapsed and refractory malignant hematologic diseases. It has treated patients with relapsed and refractory leukemia or lymphoma, with the number of cases and success rate ranking among the leading levels in the region, providing many high-risk and refractory hematologic disease patients with hope of a cure. The hospital’s Cell Therapy Center was the first in Shenzhen to obtain the national qualification as a Stem Cell Clinical Research Institution. It is a construction unit for a major public platform and a core technology research project in the biomedicine industry of the Shenzhen Municipal Development and Reform Commission, and has been approved for the Shenzhen Key Technical Special Project for Stem Cell Clinical Research. It is equipped with a cell-product quality testing laboratory, the Joint Cell Quality Testing Center, and possesses high-level research platforms such as the stem cell and cellular biotherapy platform, with the goal of establishing a complete clinical research system of research and development, translation, and application. The department routinely performs various CAR-T therapies, such as anti-CD19, CD5, and CD7 therapies, as well as bispecific antibodies, and explores optimized combinations with conventional chemotherapy and targeted therapy. The Department of Hematology is an authorized cellular therapy unit in South China and covers the domestically marketed CAR T-cell products axicabtagene ciloleucel injection, relmacabtagene autoleucel injection, equecabtagene autoleucel injection, inaticabtagene autoleucel injection, and zevorcabtagene autoleucel injection. It has accumulated extensive experience in the clinical treatment and management of cellular therapy and has attracted many patients with difficult and complex diseases from outside the region. The department’s exploration and successful practice in cellular therapy have important regional leadership and exemplary significance. In the future, with patients at the center, the department will work to establish a regional hematologic disease diagnosis and treatment center in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, integrating medical care, education, and research, and provide patients with high-level diagnostic and treatment services.