Department of Toxicology

History & Introduction
　　The department of toxicology, whose predecessor was the department of occupational health and occupational diseases, School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences in 1976, was co-founded in 1995 by professors Qiao Zhang and Jiongliang Zhou, two famous toxicologists in China. The toxicology subject was approved as a master's degree and doctoral degree awarding point in 1995 and 1998, respectively. It is also one of the first detection departments in China approved by Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture that have the qualification to evaluate the safety of new chemical substances and pesticides.Since 1995, with the leadership of academic leader professors Zhixiong Zhuang, Xingfen Yang, and Wen Chen, the subject has made a series of landmark achievements. In 1996, the laboratory of toxicology was conferred to the Key Laboratory of Five-one Science and Education Project in Guangdong Province. In 2007, it was awarded the key discipline of Guangdong Province and the national key second-level discipline. In 2014 and 2017, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution and Health Risk Assessment and Guangdong Engineering Research Center of Environmental and Health Risk Assessment were established in the toxicology department respectively, which were supported by the large team project of Sun Yat-sen University. At present, the discipline has formed several distinctive and stable research directions, each of which is in the forefront of international or domestic research. The teaching and scientific research platform conditions occupy the advanced level of domestic counterparts, and research level is in the leading status in China and in the advanced status in the world.

Staff
　　At present, the staff in the department is mainly composed of outstanding young and middle-aged teachers, including 4 professors, 2 associate professors, 1 lecturer, 3 postdoctoral students, and 7 doctoral supervisors. Professor Wen Chen is a recipient of the National Outstanding Young Scholarship, who currently act as the vice president of the Chinese Society of Environmental Mutagens and the vice editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of Preventive Medicine. In recent years, the academic leaders including professors Yun He and Yanhong Wei have been introduced from abroad as excellent talents. Professor Yanhong Wei and Qing Wang were awarded Guangdong Outstanding Young Persons Award and Guangzhou Zhujiang Science and Technology New Star, respectively. 

Teaching & Training
　　Nowadays, The Department of Toxicology offers courses for under-graduate students of preventive medicine and graduate students, covering such subjects as Basis for Hygienic Toxicology, Systematic Toxicology, Research Progress in Modern Toxicology and Toxicology theory and technology. It undertakes tasks of teaching for an average 200 class hours each year. At present, the Department has trained over 40 PhDs and more than 200 Msc students in Toxicology.

Research
　　Focusing on State Key Disciplines on Hygienic Toxicology, the department has instituted 4 steady and characteristic research fields in the past 5 years: Genetic Toxicology, Molecular Toxicology, Biochemical Toxicology and Environmental Toxicology. More importantly, it has reaped substantial results in related research field. In the past five years, the staffs of toxicology discipline have gained more than 60 national projects and more than 60 provincial and ministerial projects totally, including three major and key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation, two national key R & D projects, and more than 20 funds of the National Natural Science Foundation (general and youth projects). In the past five years, the amount of scientific research funds has exceeded 40 million RMB. More than 100 SCI papers have been published in international core journals and four patents have been granted. From 2013 to 2018, the total citations of papers in 18 subjects from Sun Yat-sen University rank the top 1‰ in global, among which pharmacology and toxicology entered the top 1%. Taken together, these achievements fully demonstrate that the international competitiveness of our discipline.