The course of pharmaceutics was set up at the year 1952 and the Division of Pharmaceutics was established in the late 1950s. The Department of Pharmaceutics was founded in 1996 by merging the Divisions of Pharmaceutics, Physical Chemistry, and Pharmaceutical Analysis. The department was headed by Prof. Wei Shu-Li from 1996 to 1999, and headed by Prof. Zhang Qiang from 1999 to 2003. In the year 2003, the department was re-constructed by two divisions, consisting of Pharmaceutics and Physical Chemistry. The department was headed by Prof. Lu Wei from 2004 to 2016. Since the year 2017, the department is headed by Prof. Lu Wan-Liang. The department branch committee of the Communist Party is headed by Prof. Qi Xian-Rong since the year 2012.
The department has 16 faculty members, including Prof, Zhang Qiang, Prof. Lu Wan-Liang, Prof. Qi Xian-Rong, Prof. Zhang Xuan, Prof. Wang Jian-Cheng, Prof. Zhou Tian-Yan, Assistant Prof. Wang Yi-Guang , Associate Prof Liu Yan, Associate Prof. Fan Tian-Yuan, Associate Prof. Xie Ying, Associate Prof. Wang Xue-Qing, Associate Prof. Li Xin-Ru, Associate Prof. Zhang Hua, Associate Prof. Dai Wen-Bing, Lecturer Zhou Yan-Xia and Lecturer He Bing. In the professor laboratories of the department, there are 120 research students or fellows, including Master students, PhD students, and Postdoctoral Research Fellows.
The goal of the department is to establish the top pharmaceutics for training the high-level talents.
The department offers a total of 20 theoretical/experimental courses for undergraduates, Master and PhD students, including three core courses, Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics, and Physical Chemistry. In collaboration with other universities, professors of the department have compiled three feature textbooks, including Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics, and Physical Chemistry for the course studies of six-year-program students at Peking University. The course of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics has approved as the excellent course of the Peking University Health Science Center. The department enrolls master and doctoral level students, and postdoctoral research fellows each year.
The research of the department covers two aspects, the first, basic research on the frontier science of pharmaceutics, including molecular pharmaceutics, biopharmaceutics, population pharmacokinetics, and physical pharmacy. The second, new formulation development on the drug delivery systems, including nano drugs, carrier delivery drugs, biological macromolecular drugs, sustained release and controlled release drugs.
The department is undertaking or has completed more than 60 projects from national and provincial grants, including the National Key Science Research Program of China (the 973 program), the Grants of National High-Tech Research and Development Program (the 863 Program), the National Innovative Drugs Program, the National Comprehensive Innovation Drug Platform (Pharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics and Pilot unit platforms), the Key Grant of National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Key Grants of Beijing Natural Science Foundation and the Key Grants from the Ministry of Education, etc. The department has been funded by the 211 Project, 985 Project and double first-class project at Peking University. The core facilities of the department have reached to the international advanced level. In the year 2011, the department was granted as the “innovation team” in the by the Ministry of Education. Base on the department, Beijing Key Laboratory of Molecular Pharmaceutics and New Drug Delivery Systems was established in 2015.
In the latest ten years, the professors of the department have published more than 300 articles in international academic journals. The research results in more than 20 scientific research and teaching awards.
The department has extensive academic communications with the departments at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Toronto, Hoshi University, Toyama University, National University of Singapore, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and University of Macao, etc. The Department of Pharmaceutics is one of the top bases for training high level talents in pharmaceutics in China.
