Prof. Baohui Han: make Shanghai Chest a window, a platform, and a business card for Shanghai Chest Hospital

“Shanghai Chest Hospital was founded in November 2, 1957 and designated by the Ministry of Health of China as a national training center for cardiovascular and chest surgery, although at its very beginning the hospital only had four main departments: Department of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Cardiology, and Department of Cardiac Surgery”. Professor Han (Figure 1) shared with us the history of the hospital at the beginning of interview.

Figure 1 Professor Baohui Han.

Collaboration and competition among different departments to promote academic development

Till 1970s, the departments of respiratory medicine in many other hospitals in Shanghai had set their own developmental priorities: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), respiratory and critical care medicine, or pulmonary tuberculosis. However, no effective treatment had been available for lung tumors. In this context, the Department of Respiratory Medicine of Shanghai Chest Hospital, under the leadership of Professor Changwen Xu, established a lung cancer ward and began to make lung cancer its main research direction. Soon, the department became one of the earliest centers that provided standardized treatment for lung cancer patients in China.

The past 47 years have witnessed the development of the lung cancer ward in the department. “From small to big, from low level to highly skillful, from local area to China and even the world, the progress is impossible without the close cooperation among all the disciplines and all the teams”. Shanghai Chest Hospital plays a leading role in research on pulmonary tumors, which benefits greatly from its well-allocated disciplines including lung tumors, chest tumors, and other chest diseases. Multidisciplinary collaboration on the diagnosis and treatment of chest tumors has been successfully carried out among Laboratory Medicine, Department of Pathology, Department of Radiology, Department of Ultrasound, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Oncology, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Anesthesiology, Department of Radiotherapy, and Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine. Top experts from different disciplines have formed a variety of professional teams, which have developed many innovative therapeutic concepts and norms for chest tumors after assimilating advanced techniques and methods. According to Professor Han, Shanghai Chest Hospital has received major national grants on studies on the early, middle, and late stages of lung cancer. These research projects will undoubtedly promote the development of new technologies, new methods, and new treatments for lung cancer and shed light on the development of this discipline in China.

Training and capacity-building

With the rapid development of modern society, every hospital pays great attention to the training of young doctors. In recent years, supported by a large number of talent-training projects and municipal/national programs, Shanghai Chest Hospital has sent many young doctors to receiving training in foreign centers. These efforts have laid a good foundation for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in the hospital. “In Shanghai Chest Hospital, young talents are constantly emerging in every field, forming an academic ladder focusing on lung tumors.” Professor Han hopes that young researchers, with a more international perspective, shall regularly read international journals and keep a close eye on the latest developments at international conferences, so as to ensure that own their studies are always on the right track. Of course, in addition to passion and ambition on academic research, the young doctors shall also respect the older generation and take care of the younger generation. They should learn from the senior doctors how to diagnose and treat a specific disease, how to deal with colleagues, how to address a specific issue, and how to communicate with a patient. Also, they should manage a patient with compassion and enthusiasm. Professor Han emphasized that the maxim that “Modesty helps one go forward, whereas conceit makes one lag behind” is never out of date. Young doctors should keep exchanging with colleagues and learn from each other.

Roles in new drug research and development

Shanghai Chest Hospital undertakes 20–30 clinical trials of new drugs annually; as a major player in clinical research, the hospital has accumulated a wealth of first-hand experience. This year at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Professor Han, as the principal investigator, presented on the preliminary results of the phase III trial on the novel targeted drug Anlotinib, receiving high attention from international peers. According to Professor Han, based on the results of this study, Anlotinib is expected to be the first licensed three-line standard treatment for lung cancer by Chinese authority later this year. This means that Shanghai Chest Hospital has the major voice in the standard three-line treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer and also confirms the leading role of the hospital in the multi-target therapy for advanced lung cancer.

Immunotherapy for lung cancer: the way ahead

In the field of lung cancer treatment, immunotherapy is the hottest clinical research topic and has shown a trend to replace or partially replace chemotherapy. Some patients with advanced lung cancer are expected to have long-term survival through immunotherapy, and advanced lung cancer is also expected to be managed as a truly chronic disease. However, immunotherapy remains a general direction and is very complicated. The current studies are mainly focused on some relatively simple immune checkpoints (based on monoclonal antibodies). In fact, many other hot spots such as T cells, DC cells, NK cells, and macrophages may also be promising. Nevertheless, Professor Han believes immunotherapy will be a powerful approach in the management of lung cancer. At present, Shanghai Chest Hospital is carrying out a cooperative lung cancer translational medicine research program with Yale University Lung Cancer Center and a chemotherapy plus lung cancer vaccine research project with a Czech center. Both studies go smoothly. Clinical studies comparing chemotherapy plus immunotherapy and chemotherapy alone are expected to be presented at the next World Lung Congress.

Make Shanghai Chest a window, a platform, and a business card for Shanghai Chest Hospital

Shanghai Chest (SHC), a peer-reviewed journal co-launched by Shanghai Chest Hospital and AME Publishing Company, is the first English-language journal established by Shanghai Chest Hospital. Professor Han hopes that it will be a window to demonstrate the strength of Shanghai Chest Hospital in scientific research and to display new techniques and methods, a platform for global peers to share their findings, and a business card representing what the hospital is doing and what it will do. He also hopes that AME Publishing Company will further enhance its interaction with Shanghai Chest Hospital, timely learn the research progress in the hospital, and publish the research results in SHC at the first time, thus fully demonstrating the achievements of Shanghai Chest Hospital in scientific research.

Expert’s introduction

Professor Baohui Han is the deputy director of Shanghai Chest Hospital and an academic leader of the Department of Respiratory Medicine, with honorable titles including “Leading talent in Shanghai” and “Excellent Academic Leader”. He is the director of hospital drug trial administration, and a State Council expert for special allowance. He has been involved in the clinical and translational studies on lung diseases (including lung tumors), especially lung cancer, for over 30 years. Currently, he is serving as the executive committee member of Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO), chairman of the Tumor Vascular-targeted Therapies Committee of CSCO, vice chairman of the Precision Tumor Diagnosis and Treatment Committee of China Anticancer Association, member of the Lung Cancer Committee of China Anticancer Association, standing committee member of the Chinese Association of Oncologists, vice chairman of Chinese Society of Microbiology and Immunology, chairman of Chinese Society of Oncology, member of the Lung Disease Committee of Chinese Medical Association Shanghai Branch, vice chairman of the Committee of Tumor-targeted Molecules of Shanghai Medical Association, and vice chairman of the Eighth Council of Shanghai Anti-cancer Association. Also, he is one of the contributors of the Quality Control Measurements for Diagnosis and Treatment of Primary Lung cancer (by the Ministry of Health). He is the director of the Endoscopy Training Center of Ministry of Health. He has been a principal (PI) or co-principal (Co-PI) investigator in dozens of international or domestic multi-center clinical trials on new drugs for lung cancer. Till now, he has published more than 200 articles in the field of lung cancer and has participated in over ten medical monographs. So far, he has won the second prize of China Medical Science and Technology Award in 2012, the second prize of Shanghai Medical Science and Technology Award in 2014, etc.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the Editorial Office, Shanghai Chest. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/shc.2017.08.15). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

(Editors: Crystal M. Yan, Molly J. Wang; Translator: Liangjun Gu)