Pathology

The Department of Pathology of Renji Hospital was established in 1950 and is one of the earliest hospitals in Shanghai to conduct clinical pathological diagnosis. With the support and guidance of hospital leaders at all levels, and through the efforts of several generations, the department team has continued to develop and expand. By 2024, it had grown into a professional team comprising 26 diagnostic physicians and 26 technical personnel, with a total working area of approximately 2,000 square meters across the East, West, and South campuses. It has established a network pathological collaboration platform with branch hospitals in Ningbo Hangzhou Bay, Wuxi, and multiple other regions, covering histopathology, cytopathology, immunohistochemistry, and molecular pathology, and integrating medical services, education, and research.【Personnel Composition】All all diagnostic physicians in the Department of Pathology possess a master's degree or above, of whom 9 hold doctoral degrees. In addition, the department is staffed with 1 full-time PhD in bioinformatics analysis and 1 PhD leading LDT projects. There are 7 personnel with senior professional titles, including current Department Director Professor Cao Dengfeng, Deputy Directors Professor Liu Zebing and Associate Professor He Yamin, and former Directors Professors Zhu Jianshan and Liu Qiang, among others, as well as 2 doctoral supervisors. In 2024, 5 trainees were receiving clinical pathology specialty base training in the Department of Pathology, 5 physicians were receiving standardized training at the pathology base, and there were 3 graduate students. Among the technical staff, there are 2 senior technicians, Chen Yiming and Xuan Beilei. 【Routine Work and Immunohistochemistry】The Department of Pathology of Renji Hospital handles more than 100,000 external examination cases annually (excluding small specimens from digestive endoscopy, 2023), more than 1,000 intraoperative frozen-section cases (2023), and more than 3,000 consultation cases (2023). Immunohistochemical testing is equipped with advanced testing platforms from DAKO, Leica, Roche, and others, with more than 28,000 cases tested annually (2023) and more than 100 testing items; cytopathological diagnosis exceeds 120,000 cases (2023), including gynecological TCT and non-gynecological TCT testing items such as urine. The strong clinical departments of Renji Hospital provide abundant specimens of neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions, particularly in the fields of hepatobiliary and pancreatic diseases, the urinary and male reproductive systems, the female reproductive system, the gastrointestinal tract, breast, thoracic surgery, head and neck, soft tissue and lymphohematopoietic systems, and liver transplantation. Senior physicians each have their own subspecialty pathology directions and rich diagnostic experience, and participate in dozens of multidisciplinary team conferences (MDT) at the hospital, fulfilling the role of pathological diagnosis as the gold standard for the diagnosis of diseases, especially tumors, and safeguarding precision medicine.【Molecular Pathology】The Department of Pathology has 2 clinical PCR laboratories approved by the Shanghai Clinical Laboratory Center and strictly implements the work and management standards for clinical gene amplification laboratories. It is equipped with testing platforms for fluorescence in situ hybridization/FISH, PCR, Sanger sequencing, and next-generation sequencing/NGS. The NGS platform is equipped with 3 sequencers in total—Illumina MiSeq DX, NextSeq 550DX, and Thermo S5DX—as well as 2 Agilent automated library preparation instruments. At present, multiple molecular pathology testing projects related to pathological diagnosis and targeted therapy have been established. Combined single-gene and multigene variant testing can be conducted on tissue or liquid biopsy specimens from lung cancer, colorectal cancer, lymphoma/leukemia, and other diseases, achieving full coverage of clinical needs. Standardized in-house testing procedures have been established, meeting all tumor-related clinical testing needs based on tissue samples and liquid biopsy samples. Since the projects were initiated in-house, they have received widespread recognition from all clinical departments.【Teaching and Research】The Department of Pathology became one of the first resident physician training bases in Shanghai in 2010 and one of the first clinical pathology specialty training bases in Shanghai in 2014 (with a urological and male reproductive subspecialty). The department undertakes clinical pathology teaching for trainees from different sources, including rotating physicians from various bases, intern physicians from various departments, and graduate students of the department itself, including 1 graduate student (including four certificates)/year, 2-3 base physicians/year, and dozens of rotating physicians. Base physicians receive supervised instruction, with experienced senior physicians assigned for one-on-one teaching. The teaching faculty is strong and the teaching ladder is well established. The department has advanced instruments and equipment and possesses all kinds of current new pathology technologies, providing a sound medical, teaching, and research platform for the training of resident physicians at the base. A feedback and communication channel for base residents, as well as a comprehensive assessment and evaluation system, has been established to motivate residents to complete their studies more effectively. In addition, the Department of Pathology has 1 doctoral supervisor in pathology at the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and 1 master's supervisor in clinical pathology, and currently has 3 graduate students enrolled. In recent years, the department has obtained 2 grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 2 Natural Science Foundation grants from the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Science and Technology, and 1 “Double Hundred” Research-Oriented Physician Program project from the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It has published multiple high-level SCI papers in Mol Cancer, J Clin Pathol, Cancer, and other journals, as well as a series of articles in renowned domestic journals such as the Chinese Journal of Pathology and the Chinese Journal of Transplantation. Over the years, it has been invited on multiple occasions to participate in important academic conferences at home and abroad, including the USCAP Annual Meeting and the Pathology Annual Meeting of the Chinese Medical Association.