▲ Professor Wei Hong came to the stage to receive the award (middle)

      The Science and Technology Achievement Award of the Chinese Society of Laboratory Animals is an authoritative award in the field of experimental animals in my country. The first prize represents the highest level of scientific research in the industry and is an authoritative certification of scientific and technological innovation capabilities in related fields in China. This award-winning project, with Professor Wei Hong as the first completer, collaborated with many domestic universities and scientific research units to tackle key problems. It is a landmark innovation achievement of Jinfeng Laboratory and Chongqing-Guangdong Pathological Research Center in the field of basic support for life sciences.

      Germ-free mice are a core strategic experimental model for intestinal microbiome research, analysis of host-bacteria interactions, and exploration of human disease mechanisms. They are also a key basic platform to support life science research and innovative biomedical research and development. For a long time, my country's high-end sterile animal breeding technology, core supporting equipment, and germplasm resource systems have been highly dependent on imports. This technical shortcoming has restricted original scientific research breakthroughs in domestic life sciences and is a typical "stuck" problem in the biomedical field.

      In view of the long-term foreign technology monopoly and industry barriers, Professor Wei Hong's team has been deeply involved in this field for 20 years. Relying on the high-quality scientific research platform of Jinfeng Laboratory, they have continued to overcome difficulties and iteratively innovate, and have successfully established a full-chain sterile mouse technology system that integrates breeding testing, bacterial transplantation, functional evaluation, localized equipment research and development, molecular quality control, and standardized promotion.

      This innovative achievement has completely broken the foreign technology monopoly, made up for the technical shortcomings in my country's sterile animal field, realized the leapfrog development of my country's sterile animal resources from "import dependence" to "independent control", from "scarcity and restriction" to "normalized popularization and application", and established a solid foundation for the localization of domestic life medicine research. At present, this independently developed germ-free mouse technology system has been successfully implemented and applied, covering many key fields such as basic medical research, innovative drug research and development, agricultural science, nutrition and health, etc. It provides a mature, reliable, and scalable domestic technology solution for original research in the field of life sciences and the upgrading of the biomedical industry in my country.

      Winning the first prize this time fully reflects the center’s solid achievements in deepening basic scientific research and insisting on independent innovation, and highlights the center’s hard-core scientific research strength in cutting-edge fields. In the next step, Jinfeng Laboratory and Chongqing-Guangdong Pathological Science Research Center will continue to focus on the frontier and core areas of experimental animals, continue to improve the domestic, standardized, and industrialized sterile animal technology system, continue to tackle key core technical problems in the industry, and fully empower my country's basic research innovation in life medicine and the high-quality development of the biomedical industry.