The Southwestern Medicinal Bioresource Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education is a research institute established on the basis of Guizhou Biochemical Engineering Center, which was approved by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (Education and Technology Document [2006] No. 30) and under the direct supervision of Guizhou University. Being a provincial key biochemical pilot base with the support of Guizhou University, it is also a research and development entity integrating teaching, product research and development, production and engineering technology, aiming to cultivating innovative talents of medicinal microbial resources research and development in Guizhou. As an independent legal entity, the Center runs as an enterprise. With the major projects and major scientific research goals as its basic starting point, the Center organizes and gathers a batch of research and development and engineering technology backbones to conduct research, development and industrialization based on the famous and special medicinal biological resources of southwest. The Center consists of five laboratories (based on the disciplines), namely, Laboratory of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Science of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Laboratory of Separation and Detection of Natural Active Ingredients, Laboratory of Mycology and Medicinal Mycology, Laboratory of Pharmacology, Laboratory of Pharmacy, one pilot plant and the General Office. The Center has one expert receiving provincial allowance, one academic leader and one academic backbone at the university level, which lays a good foundation for the development of the research teams, and makes it a distinctive multi-discipline and integrated engineering research center with local characteristics. At present, the Center has a faculty of 12 members, 6 of whom holding doctoral degrees. There are five professors, one associate professor, and one senior experimentalist.
Based on the key and core technologies of international science and technology frontiers and industrial development, the Center has undertaken and completed a number of major science and technology projects, including the National Major Science and Technology Projects, National Natural Science Foundation Projects and other scientific researches. The Center has obtained a series of major scientific research achievements, which has effectively promoted the overall development of China's pharmaceutical science, microbiological pharmacy and related industries. In recent years, the Center has successfully developed 15 convertible and industrialized projects and products, and has created the technologies for the separation of active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines, the identification, application and development of medicinal fungi with completely independent intellectual property rights. During 2011-2018, the Center has acquired 23 national invention patents. The teachers and students in the Center have published more than 270 papers in academic journals and conferences at home and abroad, of which 115 papers have been collected by SCI.
The Center has actively promoted international exchanges and cooperation, and organizes and participates in international academic conferences. It has close cooperation with Dr Kevin D. Hyde, a top international mycologist, to jointly supervise doctoral candidates. In 2017, Botany and Zoology, a program of Guizhou University, was among the top 1% of the global programs in the ESI ranking list, for which the Center served as the main contributor, as it consists of the major part of the mycology team for the discipline. In the same year, the Center's discipline of Plant Pathology helped Guizhou University's Plant Protection recognized as a world-class program.
