Professor Yang Zhenglin, an alumnus in Laboratory Medicine from the Class of 1984 of Chongqing Medical University, is Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party Committee and Dean of Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital. He is also Dean of the School of Medicine of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and Director of the Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory for Human Disease Gene Study. Professor Yang Zhenglin is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He won the National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China, the Innovation Award of the 8th Tan Jiazhen Life Science Award, the 2021 Wu Jieping Pharmaceutical Innovation Award, and the Second Prize of the 2016 National Science and Technology Progress Award. He was honored as "National Outstanding Professional and Technical Talent" in October 2021.
Fighting against the pandemic in 2020, Professor Yang Zhenglin leveraged his years of experience in clinical molecular diagnosis and his solid research competence in an active response with his scientific research team. He led the "First Batch of Emergency R&D Programs Against COVID-19" in Sichuan Province. Joining hands with enterprises, his team developed four accurate and rapid testing kits for the novel coronavirus in just two months.
Approved by the National Medical Products Administration of China, the kits were provided to the front line to address the urgent needs in many medical institutions across China including cities like Wuhan and Chengdu. The testing kits were also quickly approved by the US and the EU and available in over 80 countries, which had made a significant contribution from Sichuan to fight against the pandemic.
