Founded in 1936 as Nanjing College of Pharmacy, the China Pharmaveutical University underwent five changes of name before finally settling on its current title 50 years later. Operating under the motto of "Be brilliant and benefit others", it declares its objective as "!striving towards its goal as a world-famous, high-level research-oriented university".

It operates from two campuses with a combined area of 150 hectares – Xianwumen in the downtown area of a city which ranks second to Shanghai as a commercial centre in the Yangtze delta and the Jianging campus opened on the south-east outskirts in 2008. Part of the institution’s pitch to students is that living costs are lower than in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou.

Students, who numbered more than 15,000 in 2018, are divided into six schools – pharmacy, traditional Chinese pharmacy, life Sciences and technology, international pharmaceutical business, continuing education and higher vocational education. Recent Chinese government ratings rank it the national’s top institution, as it has been for the last 12 years, in pharmacy and third in traditional chinese pharmacy. Graduates are reported to have a 99 per cent employment rate, the highest for any of China’s state universities.

The university has a long history of research in traditional Chinese pharmacy, initiating its first programmes in 1955, admitting its first overseas postgraduate students as early as 1988 and starting post-doctoral research in 2007. The first Chinese institution to admit overseas pharmacy students, it has bilateral agreements with more than 30 international institutions and since 2008 has had joint postgraduate programmes with the University of Calabria, Italy.
China Pharmaceutical University is a “211 Project” directly under the Ministry of Education and a “Double First-Class” construction university under the Ministry of Education with a long history and a high reputation in the pharmaceutical industry. The school was formerly known as the National Pharmaceutical College (four-year system) and was founded in 1936. It is the first state-run pharmaceutical university in China's history. For more than 80 years, the school has been adhering to the spirit of the school motto of “Practice the Best, Help the Masses,” and has made important contributions to the development of the national health cause.

The school has two campuses, Xuanwumen and Jiangning, covering an area of ​​2100 acres. There are 14 departments (departments) covering 7 disciplines such as medicine, science, engineering, etc. There are currently 29 undergraduate majors, 3 specialized (higher vocational) majors, and 3 first-level doctoral programs (pharmacy, Chinese medicine) , Biology), 27 secondary discipline doctoral sites, 2 postdoctoral mobile stations. By the end of 2018, there were 16,465 full-time students, including 11,781 college students, 4,253 graduate students, 366 international students, and 65 preparatory students. There are 1661 faculty members, including 1014 full-time teachers.

The school adheres to the "academic first, teacher-student-oriented, symbiotic and win-win" philosophy, and cultivates talents in the pharmaceutical industry. In the course of running a school, it has trained more than 100,000 highly qualified pharmacy professionals, and has stepped out of 10 academicians of the two academicians and a large number of well-known experts and scholars in the field of pharmacy. Since 2000, it has won the first prize of the National Education Achievement Award (four-year term), the highest award in the government category of education in China 4 times. Graduate employment rate has long been among the top universities directly under the Ministry of Education and universities in Jiangsu Province. The school gathers many well-known experts in the field of medicine. At present, there is 1 academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 1 academician of the German Academy of Sciences, 6 winners of the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young People, 6 winners of the National Ten Thousand Talent Program, and four youths. 19 talents (6 “National Excellent Youth”, 1 “Young Yangtze River”, 4 “Young Top”), 2 “National Famous Teachers”.

The school is committed to building a multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary ecosystem of disciplines. The construction of the pharmacy discipline group with pharmacy and Chinese pharmacy as its leader has always maintained a domestic leading level, and its international influence has increased significantly year by year. In the fourth round of national subject evaluation, the pharmacy subject was rated A +, ranking first. In 2018, the ESI rankings of the four discipline areas of pharmacology and toxicology, chemistry, clinical medicine, biology and biochemistry entered the top 1% of the world. According to the latest data statistics, pharmacology and toxicology ESI ranks in the top 1 ‰, ranking 47th in the world, and 1st in domestic universities. In the world's most influential global university subject rankings, all pharmaceutical disciplines have entered the top 100. In the 2019 US NEWS World University Discipline Ranking, Pharmacology and Toxicology ranks 22nd in the world; in the 2018 ARWU ranking of world-class disciplines, Pharmacy ranks 40th in the world; in the 2018 QS World University Disciplinary Rankings, Pharmacy and Pharmacology entered Global 51st to 100th.

The school proactively serves the major national strategies and continuously improves the independent innovation ability of new drug research and development. There are 30 national key laboratories of "natural active ingredients and efficacy", provincial and ministerial key laboratories, engineering technology centers, and innovation platforms. Establish substantive academic cooperation with universities and research institutions in more than 40 countries and regions overseas. Since the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", the number of major scientific and technological projects awarded by the State "Major New Drug Creation" ranks first among universities in the country. Won the National Science and Technology Award for five consecutive years, including 4 awards for scientific and technological progress and 1 award for technological invention.

The school will always adhere to the guidance of Xi Jinping's new era of socialist ideas with Chinese characteristics, adhere to the direction of running a socialist school, implement the fundamental tasks of Lideshuren, and actively participate in global health governance. "Life" is our mission, and we are striving forward to build a world-class research university with all-round features and make unremitting efforts to compose a new chapter of national health.