The team deciphering the "leprosy" code won the National Natural Science Award

After 36 years of dormant research in the field of leprosy prevention and treatment, Professor Zhang Furen, vice president of Shandong First Medical University, ushered in a harvest moment

At the 2020 National Science and Technology Awards Conference just held, the project "Immune Genetics Mechanisms for Leprosy Hazards" completed by Professor Zhang Furen as the first completer won the second prize of the National Natural Science Award

For thousands of years, people have "talked about tingling

Because of the advancement of therapeutics, by the end of the last century, the number of patients at home and abroad has dropped significantly, and many provinces (cities) have announced the "basic elimination" of leprosy

In 1985, after graduating from medical school, Zhang Furen was assigned to the front-line work of leprosy prevention and treatment

In December 2009, it was unforgettable for Zhang Furen

In 2010, the Ministry of Health and 11 ministries and commissions jointly issued the "National Plan for Elimination of Leprosy Harm (2011-2020)", which pointed out that the spread and prevalence of leprosy is an important sign of poverty and backwardness in a country

These major discoveries of Zhang Furen’s research group include the discovery of a series of risk factors for the onset of leprosy, the discovery of the immune genetics mechanism of leprosy, the successful construction of a risk prediction model for the onset of leprosy, the realization of precise chemical prevention of leprosy and the opening of a new perspective on the study of genetic susceptibility to infectious diseases ; Discover the pleiotropic genes shared by leprosy and autoimmune diseases

Professor Zhang Furen’s team also discovered the “true culprit” that caused the fatal adverse drug reactions of leprosy patients-the risk site of dapsone syndrome HLA-B*13:01, systematically revealing the pathogenesis of dapsone syndrome , And successfully developed a kit for detecting the risk site of dapsone syndrome

Compared with individuals, Zhang Furen believes in the power of the team more

After receiving the award, Professor Zhang Furen still had no time