The catalytic transfer hydrogenation (CTH) has emerged as a promising strategy to reduce the biomass derivatives in an environmental-friendly manner. In this talk, I will present our recent studies on the liquid-phase CTH reaction using formic acid or formate as the hydrogen donor. Activity testing shows that both palladium nanoparticles supported on graphitic carbon nitride (Pd/g-C3N4) and ruthenium-based metallo-supramolecular polymers (Ru-MSP) developed in our group are catalytically active for CTH reaction. We have established the synthesis-property-performance relationship of these catalysts and proposed the plausible catalysis mechanisms based on the spectroscopy characterizations and theoretical calculations