Upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) is a kind of urological malignant disease with relatively low incidence. Domestic or international literatures were scarce relatively for UTUC and there are many controversies regarding the oncogenic mechanisms, biological behavior, clinical diagnosis and treatment, and prognostic risk factors, which are with Chinese characteristics. We have carried out a series of studies to address these problems these years and would like to introduce why we select the small field UTUC as our study project, how to find the scientific questions, how to develop the research program and how to make the translational medicine. With our efforts, we have had a serials of research results on these 5 aspects, including characteristics and prognosis, features of Chinese patients, development of treatment methods, molecular researches and domestic or international multi-center clinical trials, and hit the mark of scientific outstanding achievements. We hope that our researches could provide new insights for future studies and promote the diagnosis and treatment of UTUC in China.