Established in 1972, the Hematology & Oncology Department of the hospital is one of the earliest pediatric Hematology &Oncology centers in the country. It is now a key medical subject unit in Zhejiang province, the main unit of Zhejiang Pediatric Leukemia Diagnosis and Treatment Technology Research Center, and the chairman unit of Chinese Children Cancer Group and it has been ranked in the top three of all the Hematology &Oncology Departments in the country according to the STEM.

There are currently 73 staff members in the department, including 6 senior staff, 7 deputy senior staff, and 2 of them are doctoral supervisors. The current pace-setter in scientific research in the department is Professor Tang Yongmin, and the three vice directors in the department are Xu Xiaojun, Xu Weiqun and Zhang Jingying. The department is consisted of general ward, laminar flow ward, specialty clinic and specialty laboratory, and GMP laboratory. There are 120 beds in the specialty ward, including 4 laminar flow beds.

The department is mainly engaged in the standardization of conventional chemotherapy, cell therapy, immunotherapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in children with leukemia, lymphoma, histiocytosis, various anemia and hemorrhagic diseases. The overall diagnosis and treatment level has reached the domestic leading level, and some even the international leading level. Among all the patients in the department, the 5-year event-free survival rates of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia reached 82.5% and 68.7% respectively. The overall effective rate of children with mild and severe aplastic anemia was more than 80%, reaching the leading level in the country.

Attaching great importance to the research and development of new clinical technologies, the department applied the dynamic monitoring of minimal residual disease to guide the individualized treatment of leukemia, gaining the second prize of Zhejiang Science and Technology Progress Award. It has also established a technical platform for rapid detection of cytokine profiles by flow cytometry to guide the diagnosis, differential diagnosis and treatment of childhood hemophagocytic syndrome and various infections in blood patients, the research result of which was published in an international journal and international guideline.

Presently, the department has gained 12 National Natural Science Funds, published more than 200 scientific papers in authoritative journals at home and abroad, and developed more than 30 monoclonal antibodies against human leukemia cells, laying a good foundation for the diagnosis of leukemia and antibody targeted therapy.

Consisted of hematology ward and specialist laboratory, the department combines clinical diagnosis and treatment with experimental research and aims at the clinical diagnosis and treatment problems, vigorously carrying out translational medicine research to directly serve clinical services.

The main items in the department are:

(1)Flow cytometry (FCM) was used for immunological diagnostic typing of childhood leukemias and malignant lymphomas. PCR and quantitative PCR techniques were used to determine fusion genes to improve MICM typing.

(2)FCM was used to monitor leukemia minimal residual disease (MRD) to predict clinical prognosis and guide the clinical rational adjustment of chemotherapy regimen, achieving good results. The result of long-term follow-up has been published in Leukemia Research, Leukemia & Lymphoma, and Chinese Journal of Pediatrics and won the second prize of Zhejiang Science and Technology Progress Award.

(3)The rapid determination of cytokine profiles based on flow cytomicrosphere array technology (CBA) was used for rapid, early diagnosis and treatment monitoring of hemophagocytic syndrome (HLH), making the application of this technology in HLH diagnosis reach the international advanced level. Besides, the paper was published in British Journal of Haematology, Journal of Pediatrics, and cited by international authoritative journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Blood.

(4)The use of cytokine profiles has also been successfully applied to the judgment of various infectious agents (such as G + and G-bacteria) in children with blood tumors. The encouraging results have been published in international authoritative journals such as Intensive Care of Medicine, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Pediatric Blood & Cancer, Cytokine, etc.

(5)Cytokine profile monitoring of the department has shown a unique advantage in the diagnosis and treatment of septic shock in children with hematological tumors, increasing the success rate of rescue from 75% to more than 92%, which significantly improved the comprehensive diagnosis and treatment of children with hematological tumors.

(6)The department has long been devoted to the immunotherapy of children's tumors, and launched CART cells to treat children with refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia early in China.