The Department of Pharmaceutics of Fudan University was founded in 1936. Its predecessor was affiliated to a special unit for pharmacy training at Shanghai Medical College. After department adjustment nationwide in 1955, it was renamed as the Department of Pharmaceutics, Shanghai First Medical College. In 1985, it was renamed as the Department of Pharmaceutics, Shanghai Medical University. In 2000, Shanghai Medical University merged with Fudan University and the department was named the Department of Pharmaceutics of Fudan University. In 2008, the department moved to Zhangjiang Campus of Fudan University. In 1961, the department began to recruit graduate students, and was successively approved to grant doctoral and master’s degrees in 1981 and 1986. Since 2007, the discipline of pharmaceutics of Fudan University has been accredited as a national key discipline, and approved to build the Key Laboratory of Smart Drug Delivery of Ministry of Education, China. The department has a state-levelled “New Formulation and New Drug Delivery System Technology Platform” and "Traditional Chinese Medicine Preparation Laboratory (3rd grade)" by the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and "Pharmaceutical Preparation Pilot Laboratory" conforming to GMP requirements. The department is also the participating unit of "National Pharmaceutical Engineering Research Center".

In the past 80 years of development, the Department of Pharmacy of Fudan University has inherited the fine traditions of solidarity and progress and promoted a rigorous and realistic style of learning. The department enjoys great reputation nationwide. With the joint efforts of past academic leaders, the discipline has made great progress in education and scientific research. Especially since the 10th Five-Year Plan, remarkable achievements have been made in the field of intelligent drug delivery systems, and the international influence has been increasing year by year.

Through years of development, the discipline has formed a research direction characterized by interdisciplinarity, and has established a relatively integrated research system and developed the following four major research directions: Direction One: Drug Targeting Strategies and Drug Delivery System; Direction II: New Drug Preparations and New Formulations; Direction III: Pharmaceutical Polymers; Direction IV: Evaluation of Pharmaceutical Preparations in vitro and in vivo.

The department set up 9 programs for undergraduates majoring in Pharmaceutics and Clinical Pharmacy, 6 programs for undergraduates majoring in Biotechnology, 3 general education programs for all undergraduates, 12 programs for master graduates and 3 programs for Ph.D. graduates. The undergraduate program “Pharmaceutics” has been qualified as Shanghai excellent course. The undergraduate programs “Pharmacokinetics” and “Biopharmaceutics” has been qualified as Fudan University excellent courses. Graduates of the department have been awarded “National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation” 3 times, “Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of Shanghai” 10 times and “Excellent Master Dissertation of Shanghai” 8 times.

Since 2010, the departmental faculty has been awarded two research grants from the "973 Program", one project from the "National Technology Platform for Major Drug Discovery and New Drug Units" and two grants from the "863 Program”. In the related research directions, the faculty has been awarded 39 grants from the "National Natural Science Foundation", 4 international cooperation projects, 40 provincial and ministerial level projects; published more than 500 papers in SCI journals, of which more than 260 papers have the impact factors above 5; been licensed 52 national and international invention patents; accomplished 4 preclinical trials of the investigated new drugs, obtained one approval of new drug candidate for clinical trial, one for clinical trial, one for production; received a totally 18 provincial and ministerial awards including the first prize of the Ministry of Education Natural Science Award, the second Prize of the Ministry of Education Natural Science Award, the second prize of Shanghai Sci-Tech Progress Award, the second prize of Chinese Pharmaceutical Association Science and Technology Award.