About Westlake Laboratory

Westlake Laboratory

Westlake Laboratory is a provincial research laboratory in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, formally the Zhejiang Provincial Laboratory for Life Science and Biomedicine and known in full English form as the Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine, abbreviated WLLSB. Inaugurated in July 2020, it is one of the first research laboratories funded by the Zhejiang Provincial Government. It is led by Westlake University and was jointly established with the College of Pharmacology at Zhejiang University and the Hangzhou First People's Hospital Group. The laboratory explores two prominent and challenging research areas, ageing and metabolism-related diseases and cancer, using cutting-edge research approaches in life science and biomedicine. It is a distinct provincial-laboratory entity sponsored by Westlake University. It should not be confused with the Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, the earlier research institute associated with the founding of Westlake University, which is a separate institution covered separately in this directory.

Founding in Zhejiang's first provincial laboratory batch

In July 2020 the Zhejiang provincial government published a notice establishing four high-profile laboratories, reported by ezhejiang.gov.cn and ehangzhou.gov.cn. Westlake University was tasked to lead the construction of the Westlake Laboratory, the Zhejiang Provincial Laboratory for Life Science and Biomedicine, alongside Zhejiang University building Liangzhu Laboratory, Zhijiang Laboratory founding the provincial laboratory for intelligent science and technology, and the Alibaba DAMO Academy mainly developing Lakeside Laboratory. The notice set a common goal for the four: to concentrate major scientific research facilities and professionals and deliver original, pioneering research outcomes to bolster the province's advanced industrial clusters in internet application, life health and new materials. Zhejiang Daily reported that the average planned investment for each provincial laboratory was about 10 billion yuan over five years, and that the first batch had a clear layout, with Liangzhu and Westlake laboratories together building the life and health science and technology innovation highland while Zhijiang and Lakeside built the Internet Plus highland. Westlake University's own institutional account confirms the timing, recording that the Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine was inaugurated in July 2020 as one of the first research laboratories funded by the Zhejiang Provincial Government.

A university-led laboratory with clinical and pharmacy partners

The laboratory's governance reflects a deliberate triangle. Westlake University, the young research-oriented university in Hangzhou that sponsors the laboratory, provides the basic research base and the principal investigator community. The College of Pharmacology at Zhejiang University brings pharmaceutical science from the province's comprehensive university. The Hangzhou First People's Hospital Group brings a major municipal hospital system, and with it the clinical setting that translational research requires. Westlake University states that the laboratory collaborates with top-tier universities such as Peking University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, research institutes and innovative companies in China. Faculty recruitment notices for the laboratory add that successful applicants are also appointed as adjunct faculty members at Westlake University, a dual-appointment pattern that binds the provincial laboratory's researchers into the university's academic community rather than isolating them in a separate bureaucracy. The laboratory's own website is maintained at wllsb.edu.cn, and its faculty searches are run through Westlake University contacts, reinforcing that the university is its operating sponsor.

Two defining research challenges: ageing and cancer

Every authoritative description of the laboratory converges on the same two fields. The 2020 provincial notice said the laboratory would focus on metabolism and age-related diseases and on the study of tumour mechanisms. Zhejiang Daily's fuller account said Westlake University's laboratory focuses on the two major fields of metabolism and ageing diseases and tumour mechanism research, carrying out translational applications and emergency medical research, and creating a leading high-level basic and applied research platform in life and health. Faculty advertisements published in Nature Careers and elsewhere describe the laboratory as striving to generate breakthroughs in both basic and translational research, focusing on ageing-associated diseases and cancer, two of the most prominent and challenging areas in biomedical research, with applicants in ageing and neurodegeneration particularly encouraged. That consistency across provincial government, university and recruitment sources over several years indicates a stable mandate rather than a shifting portfolio: understand how metabolism and ageing drive disease, understand how tumours arise and progress, and carry the resulting knowledge toward translation.

Three research centers and six divisions

Westlake University's centers and laboratories page gives the laboratory's internal structure in unusual detail. The Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine consists of three research centers: a Basic Research Center, a Translational Research Center, and a Center for Infectious Disease Research. The Basic Research Center includes the Division of Metabolism and Aging and the Division of Cancer Research, mapping directly onto the laboratory's two founding fields. The Translational Research Center includes the Division of Methodology for Interdisciplinary Research and the Division of Translational Research, providing the methodological and translational machinery that moves basic findings toward application. The Center for Infectious Disease Research includes the Division of Microbiology and the Division of Vaccine and Antibody Development. Through interdisciplinary research and interconnected innovation, the university states, the laboratory integrates basic research, translational research, key technology development, clinical diagnosis and treatment, and commercialisation and application of advances in science and technology. The structure therefore runs the full chain from mechanism to medicine inside one institution, with infectious disease, the emergency medical strand named at founding, given a dedicated center rather than treated as an afterthought.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research

The infectious disease center deserves separate attention because Westlake University documents it in its own right. The Center for Infectious Disease Research was established by Westlake University in response to emerging global infectious diseases, with Hongtao Yu recorded as its executive director in the university's listing. The center harbours six research areas: epidemiology and application of innovative technologies in public health; pathophysiology and mechanisms of microbial infections; multi-level biomedical measurements and diagnostics; development of therapeutic antibodies and vaccines; small molecule drug discovery and development; and cutting-edge antimicrobial technology and medical device development. In five to ten years, the center strives to build a national-level platform with a core team of 30 to 40 internationally recognised researchers working collaboratively to build state-of-the-art facilities, including Pathogen Protection level 3 laboratories and a high-end research and development platform meeting Good Manufacturing Practice standards. Within the provincial laboratory, this center's Division of Microbiology and Division of Vaccine and Antibody Development connect directly to that wider programme, giving Westlake Laboratory a standing capability in the field that the COVID-era founding moment made urgent and that its founding documents called emergency medical research.

Core facilities and research infrastructure

Recruitment materials for the laboratory enumerate the shared infrastructure offered to its faculty: state-of-the-art core facilities including cryo-electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, flow cytometry, light microscopy, genomics, metabolism, bioinformatics and high-throughput screening, together with modern laboratory space, internationally competitive salaries and benefits and a generous start-up package. The list is not generic. Cryo-electron microscopy supports the structural biology for which Westlake's scientific community is known; genomics, metabolism and bioinformatics platforms serve the metabolism and ageing programme; high-throughput screening serves cancer and drug-oriented translational work. Westlake University's wider facilities ecosystem, documented on its School of Life Sciences pages, includes a Laboratory Animal Resources Center providing animal husbandry, transgenic and gene knockout services, strain rescue and cryopreservation under licences issued by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Science and Technology, and Biomedical Research Core Facilities designed to provide technical solutions beyond the capabilities of individual laboratories. A provincial laboratory led by the university draws strength from that surrounding platform base, which is one reason the university-led model was chosen for Zhejiang's life science and biomedicine flagship.

People, recruitment and scientific community

The laboratory recruits tenure-track and tenured faculty at all academic levels, and its advertisements describe a supportive and vibrant scientific community committed to pursuing questions fundamental to the understanding of biology and disease, developing technologies that benefit humanity and advance human health, attracting the best and brightest scientific minds, and training the next generation of scientific leaders. Those are stated aspirations, but they are backed by concrete offers: adjunct appointment at Westlake University, start-up packages, and access to the core facilities described above, with applications directed to the laboratory's faculty search address at Westlake University. The emphasis in repeated advertisements on ageing and neurodegeneration expertise shows recruitment being used to deepen the founding fields rather than broaden into unrelated areas. For a laboratory inaugurated only in 2020, sustained international faculty advertising in venues such as Nature Careers is itself evidence of an operating institution building its principal investigator base year by year.

Distinction from the Westlake Institute for Advanced Study

Because Westlake names recur in Hangzhou science, the distinctions matter. The Westlake Institute for Advanced Study was the research institute established ahead of Westlake University itself, the vehicle through which the university's founding scientists first assembled. Westlake Laboratory, by contrast, is a Zhejiang provincial laboratory, created by the provincial government's July 2020 decision, funded as one of the province's first provincial laboratories, led by the university but jointly established with Zhejiang University's College of Pharmacology and the Hangzhou First People's Hospital Group, and organised into its own three centers and six divisions. Its full name, Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine, its abbreviation WLLSB, its own domain and its July 2020 inauguration all mark it as a separate entity with a separate mandate. Publications and appointments credited to WLLSB belong to the provincial laboratory; the institute's earlier history belongs to a different chapter of the Westlake story, even though the people and the campus community overlap.

Place in Zhejiang's life and health highland

Within Zhejiang's system, which grew from the first four laboratories of 2020 to ten provincial laboratories, Westlake Laboratory is the Westlake University-anchored platform for life science and biomedicine, paired from the start with Zhejiang University's Liangzhu Laboratory for systems medicine and precision diagnosis. The pairing is complementary: Liangzhu works from clinical problems in mental disorders, genetic and systemic diseases and blood and immune diseases toward precision diagnosis, while Westlake works from basic mechanisms in metabolism, ageing and cancer toward translational application, with infectious disease capacity held in its third center. Both laboratories sit in Hangzhou, serve the same provincial life and health innovation highland named in the 2020 notice, and collaborate outward to universities, institutes and companies. A further neighbouring platform recorded by Westlake University, the Key Laboratory of Growth Regulation and Translational Research of Zhejiang Province established in November 2019, shows that the university's life science base was accumulating provincial platforms immediately before the provincial laboratory itself was inaugurated.

Outlook

Westlake Laboratory's public record is that of a young institution with an unusually well-documented design: a dated provincial founding decision, a named lead university and two named co-builders, two stable research fields, a published three-center and six-division structure, enumerated core facilities, and continuing international recruitment. Its goals, breakthroughs in basic and translational research on ageing-associated diseases and cancer and a national-level infectious disease platform with dozens of internationally recognised researchers, are framed by its own sources over five-to-ten-year horizons. Judged on the verifiable evidence, the laboratory has put in place the structure those goals require. Its longer-term standing will depend on the discoveries its divisions produce and the translations its hospital and pharmacy partners carry into practice, which is precisely the chain, from basic research through key technology development to clinical diagnosis, treatment and commercialisation, that Westlake University says the laboratory was built to integrate.