Program overview
Pathology and Pathophysiology are core disciplines in basic medical sciences. Simply put, they study "how diseases arise" and "how diseases progress." Pathology focuses on morphological changes in tissues and cells (e.g., what a tumor looks like), while Pathophysiology examines functional and metabolic alterations (e.g., why blood pressure drops during shock). Core courses include Systemic Pathology, Molecular Pathology, Disease Model Construction, and Cell Signal Transduction. If you are curious about disease mechanisms, enjoy hands-on experiments (e.g., sectioning, animal models, molecular assays), and prefer not to work directly with patients, this major is a great fit. Chinese universities have deep expertise in tumor pathology, infectious disease models, and metabolic disease mechanisms, with many labs collaborating directly with affiliated hospitals, giving you access to real clinical samples.