The pediatric laboratory of Nanjing Medical University founded in the late 1970s whose predecessor was Pediatric Kidney Disease Research Center. Part of the Childcare Research Center’s equipments and personnel merged into the Institute of Pediatrics composed of Childcare Research Center and Pediatric Kidney Disease Research Center in 1999.During the implementation of the State's Tenth Five-Year Plan, the pediatric research institute finished the transformation, which now has laboratories covering a total area of 1,200 square meters, more than 36 apparatuses worth more than 10,000 Yuan, four major functional districts respectively for molecular of biology, pathology, cell cultivation, and biochemistry, with basic conditions for model organism (nematode, Brachydanio- rerio) research, molecule clone, gene, protein analysis, morphological research of pathology, cell cultivation and ethologic study, and the ability to perform such experiments as routine nematode injection under microscope, carriers construction and transfection, construction of cDNA library, of subcellular position, Northern Blot, Western Blot, EMSA, differential expression protein screen, hybridize in situ, immunity tissue chemistry, diagnosis for renal pathology. The institute is as a research platform for Pediatrics and become the backbone of the development of disciplines, and also opened to peers of research and offers community service and cooperation in scientific research in its fields.

In recent years the Institute of Pediatrics has obtained considerable development in the domestic, forming characteristics of its own, especially in the molecular mechanisms of childhood obesity and its complications, embryonic kidney development and prevention of kidney fibrosis research. Since 2000, it has trained 1 post-doctoral student, conferred doctorate on 11 people, and the master's degree on more than 70 people; it has published more than 800 scientific papers, including 66 SCI papers and more than 30 scientific and technological works; it has obtained 1 National 973 Program, 15 National Nature Science Foundation, 1 key national project for “the Ninth Five-Year Plan”, several provincial-and-ministerial-level subjects, and up to more than 14 million in research funds. It has won 10 prizes for scientific and technological process at provincial and ministerial levels and 27 prizes for scientific and technological process at the municipal level.Many faculty members have been listed among recipients of the special subsidy for experts from the State Council, among young and middle-aged expert with outstanding contributions in Jiangsu, or among participants of such provincial projects as “333 Project”, “Green and Blue Project ", “135 Project”, and “Healthcare Revitalization Project”.