Liver and Infectious Diseases Department

The Department of Hepatology and Infectious Diseases of Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, was officially established in 2009. Through talent recruitment and training, it has built an elite team with outstanding clinical and research strength and excellent professional and technical skills, with an independent PI laboratory and a dedicated research team, 5 clinical subspecialty groups, and 1 platform for research on antimicrobial resistance mechanisms. The department has opened hepatology subspecialty clinics including an autoimmune liver disease clinic, a difficult liver disease clinic, a chronic hepatitis B functional cure clinic, and a fatty liver specialty clinic. It has consistently adhered to a multidisciplinary collaboration model involving clinical medicine, pathology, imaging, interventional therapy, and other specialties, with unique expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of difficult and rare non-infectious liver diseases, formulating individualized treatment and follow-up plans for patients with all kinds of liver disease and meeting patients' needs for full-course management. The department has strong capabilities in the diagnosis and treatment of unexplained fever, bacterial and fungal infections, rare pathogen infections, and multidrug-resistant bacterial infections; it has long led multiple resistance surveillance projects on major clinical pathogens, while the research team has conducted in-depth studies on bacterial resistance mechanisms, leading the country in this field and exerting a certain international influence.

The department undertakes consultations for the whole hospital on infections, fever of unknown origin, and liver disease–related issues, with annual routine consultations exceeding 10,000, playing an important role in the rational use and management of antimicrobial drugs and in liver disease diagnosis and treatment. The department has become an international training center in clinical microbiology, and in 2015 obtained ESCMID Collaborative Centre status (11 in China in total). In May 2015 it became one of the first six national training bases for the diagnosis and treatment of bacterial and fungal infections — the “Peiyuan Program.” In September 2016 it was approved by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Science and Technology as the “Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology and Bioinformatics Research,” with Professor Yu Yunsong (俞云松) as laboratory director. In 2017 it became a member unit of the Zhejiang Difficult Liver Disease Collaboration and a fatty liver diagnosis and treatment center of the National Fatty Liver Health Promotion Project. In 2018 it became a demonstration hospital of the national chronic hepatitis B functional cure (Qomolangma) project.

The department has established long-term collaborative relationships with the US NIH and with the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, and Glasgow in the UK, and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, jointly carrying out research on resistant bacteria virulence, bacterial resistance mechanisms, and the establishment and application of pathogen diagnostic systems. It maintains good collaboration with nearly fifty hospitals in more than twenty provinces and cities nationwide, gives more than ten special-topic presentations annually at major domestic infectious disease conferences, and regularly hosts national continuing education courses. Since 2010, it has organized an annual training course on the rational use of antimicrobial drugs — more than 30 sessions held so far, with over 10,000 physicians from across the country having participated.

Technical Advantages

Diagnosis and treatment of fever of unknown origin: Fever of unknown origin is an internal-medicine diagnostic challenge whose causes can involve every body system and is among the most complex differential diagnoses. Our department has treated large numbers of such cases and has established a systematic, standardized workflow for their diagnosis and treatment. Through online consultations, distance education, advanced training, continuing education, national-level training courses, and other formats, we have disseminated this experience across Zhejiang Province and nationally, leading the province in this field.

Difficult and critical liver disease: The department has rich experience and in-depth research in difficult autoimmune liver disease, metabolic liver disease, hereditary liver disease, functional cure of chronic hepatitis B, mother-to-child transmission blocking during pregnancy, antiviral treatment of hepatitis C, liver failure, fatty liver, and more. The department conducts liver disease health education every year, helping patients correctly understand their disease and manage it themselves, improving their quality of life.

Diagnosis and treatment of multidrug-resistant and superbug infections: The department has long been committed to antimicrobial resistance surveillance and resistance mechanism research, undertaking multiple national projects including the 863 and 973 Programs, key and general projects of the National Natural Science Foundation, and Ministry of Health industry funds, leading the country in this field with growing international influence. Team members work to translate basic research results into clinical treatment, successfully rescuing large numbers of patients with severe infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria and superbugs.

Diagnosis and treatment of rare pathogens: Using etiological testing methods, including next-generation gene sequencing, the department has diagnosed large numbers of difficult and rare pathogen infections.

Academic Standing

In February 2015, it became a Collaborative Centre of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) — more than 100 collaborative centres worldwide, 11 in China.

In May 2015, it became one of the first six national training bases for the diagnosis and treatment of bacterial and fungal infections — the “Peiyuan Program.”

In September 2016, it was approved by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Science and Technology as the “Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology and Bioinformatics Research,” with Professor Yu Yunsong (俞云松) as laboratory director.

In 2017, it became a member unit of the Zhejiang Difficult Liver Disease Collaboration and a fatty liver diagnosis and treatment center of the National Fatty Liver Health Promotion Project.

In 2018, it became a demonstration hospital of the national chronic hepatitis B functional cure (Qomolangma) project.

Research Achievements

Starting from scratch, under the leadership of Professor Yu Yunsong (俞云松), the research team has given full play to the close integration of basic science and clinical practice, forming a clinical innovation research team with distinctive features, clear research directions, high academic influence among domestic peers, and a certain influence among international peers. The team has focused on the clinical problem of multidrug resistance, continuously conducting in-depth research to clarify resistance mechanisms, the prevalence of resistant bacteria, and their epidemiological characteristics, providing scientific evidence for the diagnosis and treatment of resistant bacteria and for infection control. Since 2010 it has undertaken more than 50 national-level projects, including nearly 40 Natural Science Foundation grants (including 2 key projects); it has obtained 1 national invention patent and applied for 2 invention patents, and has published nearly 200 SCI papers as first or corresponding author. In 2011 and 2017, its papers were honored among China's 100 Most Influential International Academic Papers; the 2017 study on polymyxin (MCR) resistance was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases (IF 27.5) and was rated one of 5 “highly cited papers” in the field of infection in 2017. In 2020, it completed a national multicenter case-control and molecular epidemiological study revealing the clinical relevance of mcr-1–carrying Escherichia coli in China and the diversity of its plasmids, published in the top international medical journal The Lancet Microbe. In 2022, the research groups of Yu Yunsong/Chen Yan (陈衍) developed and established an Staphylococcus capitis cgMLST system, revealing the clonal spread and resistance mechanisms of linezolid-resistant Staphylococcus capitis, published in Nature Communications.

Discipline leader Yu Yunsong has participated in the formulation of multiple industry standards and expert consensus documents, including the 2012 Chinese Expert Consensus on the Diagnosis, Treatment, Prevention and Control of Acinetobacter baumannii Infection; the 2014 Chinese Expert Consensus on ESBL Coping Strategies; the 2015 first edition of the Expert Consensus on β-lactam antibiotics/β-lactamase inhibitor combination preparations; the 2020 revised Expert Consensus on the Clinical Use of β-lactam antibiotics/β-lactamase inhibitor combination preparations; the 2020 ESCMID guidelines for the treatment of infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria; the 2021 Chinese Expert Consensus on the Infection, Prevention and Control of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae; and the 2022 Expert Consensus on the Rational Clinical Use of Amphotericin B Deoxycholate.