Founded in 1954, the Department of Pathophysiology atCollege of Basic Medical Sciences, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South Universityis an important part of the first batch of national key disciplines in 1989 and re-approved in 1997 and 2011. There are 16 employees in the department presently, including 6 professors and 5 associated professors, more than 70% ofthemhave PhD degrees and overseas experience. There are one member of the basic medical discipline evaluation group of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, one chief scientist of the youth 973 project, one distinguished young scholars of National Natural Science Foundation of China, one new century innovative talent of the Ministry of Education, one outstanding youth of Natural Science in Hunan Province, 2 young backbone teachers in Hunan Province, and 3 high-level academic backbone talents in Hunan Province "225" project .

Focusing on interdisciplinary and translational medical research on pathogenesis and therapeutics of sepsis, multiple organ injury and cardiovascular pathophysiology，the Department of Pathophysiology acts as one of the leading institute of shock research field of the Chinese Society of Pathophysiology. It has long led the research directions of shock and sepsis in China, and found theSepsis Translational Medicine Key Lab of Hunan Province in 2014. Thefaculty from the Department of Pathophysiology acquired funding from 1 key project and more than 40 general projects of the National Natural Science Foundation and made important progress in the research field of sepsis and multiple organ injury. They have published nearly 150 SCI papers and won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, the first prize of the Scientific and Technological Progress Award of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the second prize of the Natural Science Award of the Ministry of Education, and the second prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Xiao Xianzhong, as the only representative of China, participated in the “Minimum quality threshold in pre-clinical sepsis studies (MQTiPSS): an international expert consensus initiative for improvement of animal modeling in sepsis”. The Department of pathophysiology has also established long-term and stable cooperation and exchange programs with the Federal Institute for Medical Research and UT Southwest Medical Center in the United States, which has laid a solid foundation for the cultivation of top-notch talents.

Thefaculty from the Department of Pathophysiology has been enthusiastically impelling the teaching reform and made remarkable achievements in curriculum construction, innovation and textbook compiling. More than 20 provincial and school level teaching reform projects have been accomplished or in progress, and more than 60 papers oneducational reformhave been published. The “Pathophysiology” course has been recognized as the National Excellent Course in 2005, the National Excellent Resource Sharing course in 2016 andthe National Quality Online Open Coursein 2019. The national planning textbook “Pathophysiology” (version 1 ~ 4) for undergraduates of general higher education was compiled by thefacultyas the deputy chief editor and editorial board member. They also participated in the compilation of a variety of national planning textbooks and teaching reference books. The first prize of Hunan Teaching Achievement Award was conferred twice and the second prize of Hunan Teaching Achievement Award was endowed once to the faculty inthe Department of Pathophysiology.