Overview

        The Zhejiang Chinese Medical University International Collaborative Research Centre for Nutrition, Metabolism and Health is an important international cooperation platform for nutrition research and talent training. It supports researchers in national, provincial, municipal and corporate scientific research projects, and international cooperation.

Research Directions

        The Centre conducts extensive and in-depth basic and applied research on nutrition and health mainly in three areas:

(1) Pathological mechanisms of alcoholic fatty liver disease: The Centre explores the pathogenesis of alcoholic fatty liver disease based on multiple protein targets with mouse models;

(2) Nutritional intervention of alcoholic fatty liver disease: The Centre investigates the effects of different types of nutrition (lipids, carbohydrates and proteins, etc.) on the development and progression of alcoholic fatty liver disease;

(3) Nutritional epidemiology: The Centre explores human’s response to diet and nutrition by randomized controlled trials and case-control studies and researches the mechanism behind the link between nutrition and chronic diseases (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and breast cancer, etc.), with multi-omics technologies.

Research Staff

        The research team of the Centre, headed by Prof. Li Songtao, has 12 people. Its expertise covers a broad range of topics, including biology, food science, epidemiology and bioscience.

        Prof. Li is a professor of the School of Public Health, ZCMU. He has been named as  Top-notch Talent of the Zhejiang Ten Thousand Talents Plan in 2020 and Young Scientific and Technological Talent with Outstanding Contributions in Zhejiang Province in 2019. He serves as a Standing Committee member of the Nutrition and Bone Health Committee, Chinese Nutrition Society. His research focuses on the pathological mechanisms and nutritional intervention of alcoholic fatty liver disease. He has been selected into the Talent Cultivation Project of Paring Academicians with Young Talents in higher education institutions in Zhejiang, and received research start-up funds for high-level talent introduction in ZCMU and funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC). He has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals such as the Journal of Hepatology, the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Frontiers in Pharmacology, British Journal of Pharmacology, and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Projects and Cooperation

        As a platform for domestic and international research cooperation and academic exchanges, the Centre has carried out extensive collaboration with well-known global universities, mainly in the United States and Australia. It has undertaken more than 20 national projects, including the Major Research Plan, General Program and Young Scientists Fund projects of NSFC, and many provincial and ministerial projects.

Equipment

        The Centre has access to state-of-the-art equipment, including mass spectrometry, flow cytometry, light microscopy, high-throughput screening, cell staining system, real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR instrument, etc.