Zhou Honghao, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering
Zhou Honghao, male, Han nationality, was born in Changsha, Hunan Province in May 1939. In 1962, he graduated from the Medical Department of the former Wuhan Medical College. In 1983, he went to the Medical Faculty of The University of Hong Kong for Clinical Pharmacology training, then worked as senior fellow at the Clinical Pharmacology Laboratory of Vanderbilt University in the United States. He returned to homeland to set up China’s first Institute of Pharmacogenetics in 1991. In March 1995, he was appointed as vice president of the former Hunan Medical University, and director of Institute of Clinical Pharmacology of Central South University in February 2002. In December 2005, he was elected as Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Professor Zhou Honghao is a pioneer and foregoer of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics disciplines and founder of individualized medicine, and has been dedicated to the teaching, research and transformation of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics for a long time. His major contributions in scientific research are that he finds and clarifies a number of phenomena, mechanisms and laws of racial and individual differences in response to drug caused by genetic factors, establishes a theoretical system in pharmacogenetics with Chinese national and ethnic characteristics, discovers and clones the CYP2C19*5 allele, takes the lead in applying the pharmacogenetics theory to clinical practice, sets up China’s first counseling center of individualized medicine, develops the first gene chip for individualized medicine therapy, and launches “tailored” individualized medicine treatment based on pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics.
After 30 years of systematic research, Professor Zhou has accumulated plentiful scientific results. For example, he, as the first or corresponding author, has published over 160 papers in international SCI journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, and these papers had been cited 2436 times by March 2012 and listed as references by 8 foreign monographs or textbooks. He was chief editor of English and Chinese monographs on Pharmacogenetics, 5 medical postgraduate textbooks, 6 English and Chinese textbooks on Pharmacology for five-year and eight-year Medical Colleges. He has won Henry Christian Award which is the highest prize of the American Association of Clinical Research Professionals, Chinese Medical Science and Technology Award and 5 provincial and ministerial level first prizes, and trained more than 200 masters, doctors and post-doctors. Professor Zhou Honghao is one of the founders of the International Society for Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics, and initiated the Professional Committee of Division of Pharmacogenomics, Chinese Pharmacological Society and served as its first chairman. He is an editorial committee member of Pharmacogenet Genomics and other four foreign magazines, and judge of American Merck International Clinical Pharmacology Scholarship.
