EARLY HISTORY

        In 1955, the first microbiology major in a Chinese university was established in Wuhan University by the esteemed biologist Dr. H. Zanyin Gaw (高尚荫), an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Along with the development of biology teaching and scientific research, the quantity and types of collected microbial cultures kept increasing. This demand led to the establishment of the Wuhan University Storage Facility for Microbial Strains. Although the storage facility was poor, the collected microbial strains (including viruses) had not only met the demand of teaching and research for our own university, they also played historically important roles by supporting the needs of domestic institutions of higher education and research institutes. This had built solid foundations for the later establishment of CCTCC.                           

ESTABLISHMENT AND DEVELOPMENT 

         After the implementation of the patent system in China in 1979, there were great demands to deposit biological materials for patent application. In 1985, with the rigorous promotion by the former chairman of the Department of Biology in Wuhan University, Prof. Zhen-Rong Peng, the former China Patent Office (currently the State Intellectual Property Office) reached a consensus with the former State Education Commission (currently the Ministry of Education), after a number of comprehensive surveys and assessments, to establish China Center for Type Culture Collection (CCTCC) based on the Wuhan University Microbial Strains Storage Facility. On March 8, 1985, the former president of Wuhan University, Prof. Min-You Qi, signed a consignment agreement with the former China Patent Office on the deposition of patent cultures. The agreement was published officially in the form of “the Eighth Announcement” by the China Patent Office. Since then, CCTCC had officially started to accept deposition of patent cultures. In the meantime, CCTCC had re-classified, revived, and deposited those strains originally stored for teaching, research, and industrial application. Gradually, CCTCC had distinguished herself by focusing on the deposition of patent cultures while kept collecting and depositing regular non-patent cultures and received recognition worldwide.            In 1987, CCTCC joined the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and since then actively participated in the activities held by WFCC. The former CCTCC director, Prof. Tian-Shen Tao, once served as a member of the WFCC education committee. With the development of the Chinese patent system, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) approved CCTCC to be a Budapest Treaty-recognized International Depository Authority (IDA) after review and on-the-spot assessment. 

      Since July 1, 1995, CCTCC have performed duties and responsibilities in accordance with the requirements and guidelines of WIPO to protect the legitimate rights of patent culture depositors.                         

  CCTCC has an advisory committee that consists of esteemed scholars domestic and abroad for the purpose of improving the level of culture deposition and research. The Third CCTCC Advisory Committee comprised of seventeen experts was formally established in March 2012.                          

EXPANSION AND UPGRADE 

Culture resources are the bases of research and application for life sciences and other related disciplines. To improve the level of culture deposition and serve the society better, CCTCC kept improving the techniques for culture deposition since 1990s. For instance, CCTCC had developed techniques for long-term preservation of extreme halophiles and certain autotrophic bacteria. Multiple research articles focusing on the methodological improvement had been published. In the meantime, CCTCC laid emphasis on the expansion of the source of cultures. On one hand, CCTCC widely collected cultures from various regions and habitats in China. On the other hand, CCTCC exchanged cultures with colleagues abroad and imported cultures to meet the demands of various clients. For instance, in the 1980s, Prof. Tian-Shen Tao, organized several expeditions to Shennongjia Nature Reserve to investigate bacterial resources. From 2005 to 2007, Prof. Cheng-Xiang Fang sent graduate students and faculties to places including the Changbai Mountain, Xin Jiang Province, and Tibet to collect samples. Since 2009, Associate Prof. Fang Peng has gone to the Arctic seven times and to the Antarctica four times by joining the national team of polar expedition every year to collect marine, glacier, frozen soil, and polar animal and plant samples. From these expeditions, CCTCC obtained vast microbial resources. A number of new taxa have been discovered. So far, CCTCC has published nine new bacterial genera and fifty-two new bacterial species in the internationally renowned journals such as IJSEM. These work gained recognition from colleagues worldwide.                           

For a long time, CCTCC worked at building microbial resource platforms and has made substantial progress. Particularly in recent few years, the government has placed emphasis on the building of basic condition platforms for science and technology resources and increased funding. Between 2004 and 2007, CCTCC successively undertook and completed two pilot platform-building projects “Standard collation, integration and sharing of patent/teaching experiment microbial strain resources” and “Standard collation, integration and sharing of experimental cell resources” funded by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology; the project “Nationwide survey of microbial strain resources” funded by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the 2009 Chinese Ministry of Health funded project “Building the detection technology platform for the pathogen of newly emerged and sudden infectious diseases”. During this period, the Chinese Ministry of Education and Wuhan University listed CCTCC as the key construction base of 985 Project Phase II and funded the innovation of its infrastructure. The culture preservation storerooms that met the biosafety requirement were built. The storage capacity was expanded to 230,000 samples. A batch of equipments and instruments for culture classification, quality control, and culture preservation were purchased and installed. Meanwhile, CCTCC built technical platforms that have both classical methodology and modern methodology and widely undertook services of microbial classification and identification, cell line quality control and provided standard technical services to the society.                           

To accelerate the sharing of biological resource information, CCTCC set up a website (www.cctcc.org.cn) in 2004. Through continuous improvement and perfection, four web-based databases were successively built including the microbial resource database for patent/teaching (funded by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology), the microbial resource database for universities and colleges (funded by the Chinese Ministry of Education), the resource and information platform for the pathogen of infectious disease, and STR. The website information is freely accessible to the public and is convenient for making request for culture deposits. Up to now, the universities, research institutes, enterprises, and individuals that had requested cultures from CCTCC extend all over the 26 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions of China and a number of foreign countries and regions including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany.                           

CCTCC has seven permanent staff members and fifteen contract workers. The permanent members include two professors, two associate professors, one senior engineer, and two technicians. Six faculty members from the College of Life Sciences and the College of Pharmacy in Wuhan Univeristy serve as duty professors. All these personnel together form a well-structured, experienced, and professional team of culture deposition.                         

  The various technological platforms established by CCTCC not only support culture deposition, research, and application, they also play important roles in responding to some epidemic crises happened in recent years. For instance, during the outbreak of SARS in 2003 and avian flu in 2006, CCTCC participated in the isolation, purification, and identification of more than ten strains of viruses including SARS and influenza viruses H5N1 and H1N1, and provided solid technological support for the research on the etiology and pathogenic mechanism of sudden infectious disease. The director of CCTCC, Prof. Cong-Yi Zheng, was awarded National Outstanding Scientific and Technological Worker in Fighting against SARS.                           

Future Plan and Prospective 

CCTCC has so far gained an edge in the deposition of patent cultures and stands in the front ranks of international institutions. However, with respect to the collection and deposition of regular cultures (non-patent cultures), there still exists a large gap between CCTCC and well-known domestic and overseas institutions no matter on the quantity and quality of deposited cultures or on the overall level of culture deposition, though CCTCC has already entered the State microbial and experimental cell resource sharing platform and becomes the national team of culture deposition and sharing. There is large room for further development. The five to ten year goals of CCTCC are to recruit three to five talents who specialized on culture deposition and organize a provincial or ministerial innovation team; to undertake or host three to four State-level key or special funded projects to improve research expertise to a whole new level; to establish and perfect four to five platforms for culture deposition service; to expand the scale of regular culture deposition to the internationally advanced level and transform CCTCC into an internationally transform CCTCC into an internationally well-known institution for culture deposition.