The Department of Thoracic Oncology mainly treats patients with malignant thoracic tumors, including lung cancer, esophagus carcinoma, mediastinal tumor, etc. With a total number of 71 doctors and nurses, the team consists of radiotherapists and oncologists (including 6 professors/chief physicians, 7 associate professors/deputy chief physicians) and nurses (including 1 chief nurse and 2 deputy chief nurses), 3 of whom are doctoral tutors and 8 are master tutors. The Department joins a multiple-disciplinary team (MDT) of West China Hospital with the Respiratory Medicine Department, the Thoracic Surgery Department, the Radiology Department, the Pathology Department and the Precision Medicine Center, etc., providing patients with the best diagnosis and treatment of thoracic tumor, as well as the social security cognizance of tumor-targeted drugs and the prescription follow-up in Chengdu, even in Sichuan. Moreover, to provide personalized services, the Department has set up professional groups such as cancer pain assessment and treatment (CPT), cancer patient psychological counseling (CPC), cancer patient nutritional assessment guidance (CNG) and cancer infection control (CIC), etc., and a service group to provide information of the international frontier clinical trials of new anti-cancer drugs (GCP) for the patients.
The Department undertakes the teaching and internship of international students, undergraduates and postgraduates majoring in thoracic oncology in West China Medical Center of SCU, as well as the clinical teaching work of standardized training for the resident physicians and nurses specialized in oncology. Additionally, the Department often conducts the academic exchange and remote consultation with the network hospitals of West China Hospital and primary hospitals, promoting the normalization of antineoplastic therapy in this region.
Relying on the State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, the Department devotes to the basic research and clinical translational research on malignant tumors, carrying out a number of major national research projects as follows: National “973” Program, National “863” Program, “11th Five-year Plan”, “12th Five-year Plan”, “13th Five-year Plan” and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), with the related research results published in the internationally renowned journals, including Nat Med, PNAS, Clin Cancer Res, Mol Ther, Int J Radiat Oncol Biol & Phys, and Radiother & Oncol, etc. Some of these findings have been applied into clinical practice or have become the medicine evidence of international treatment recommendation. In addition, the Department has been actively involved in a number of international/national multi-centric researches on new drugs, which have demonstrated effective clinical benefits. Some of these researches have been published in the internationally renowned journals, such as J Clin Oncol, Lancet Oncol, etc.
The biotherapy department was first established in 1997, it is the earliest biotherapy ward in China, with a history of over 20 years. The Department combines the clinical advantage of the Tumor Center of West China Hospital with the technical strength of the State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy of SCU, carries out routine comprehensive treatment of tumor in accordance with international standards, and provides patients with innovative treatment options in line with the international frontier.
Bio-immunotherapy is the fastest-growing frontier in tumor field, in which biological immunodrugs (e.g., PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies, antibody-conjugated immunodrugs, etc.) have been proved to significantly improve the therapeutic efficacy of tumor patients, and biotechnological means (e.g., CAR-T, DC vaccine, etc.) which applied in the treatment of malignant tumors, have been developing vigorously. The Department is devoted to the clinical transformation of new tumor treatment technologies and innovative biological immunodrugs, providing patients with the comprehensive tumor treatment strategies combined with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and molecular targeted therapy, and providing the latest treatment keeping pace with the international frontier for the patients as early as possible according to the characteristics of their diseases and tumor molecular genetic status.
Now, there are 3 professors and 4 associate professors in the biotherapy department, including 4 Ph.D. tutors and 2 master tutors. Its cooperative technology support platform includes dozens of academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as a large number of professional clinical and clinical transformation experts and professors.
