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Singapore's Highlights in Biomedical Sciences - July 2010
July 31, 2010

Editor's Note
In July, there were significant developments in both manufacturing and R&D in Singapore. Pfizer expanded its nutrition manufacturing plant which is now amongst the largest worldwide, while GlaxoSmithKline and EDB announced the first eight projects to be funded under the US$24 million GSK-Singapore Partnership for Green & Sustainable Manufacturing. In R&D, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology’s biotech spin-off – Visterra Singapore – raised US$6 million in venture funding, while A*STAR research institutes announced their collaboration with Cytos Biotechnology and Life Technologies. Singapore also announced S$10 million funding for the Silver Community Test-Bed Programme that presents a platform for companies to partner the public sector in testing and developing healthcare innovations, while SingHealth officially launched its S$20 million Investigational Medicine Unit. Furthermore, the National University of Singapore launched the NUS Initiative to Improve Health in Asia (NIHA) that comprises research, high-level policy forums and leadership programmes.

 

 

 

 

Pfizer Strengthens Manufacturing Capabilities in Asia with Expansion of Singapore Nutrition Plant
Pfizer announced a US$100 million investment into the expansion of its Singapore Nutrition Plant, helping it continue to set the standard for the manufacture of high-quality, safe and environmentally sustainable nutritional products for infants and children. This expansion, which brings the total investment in the plant to US$372 million makes it one of the largest nutritional plants worldwide.


The expansion of the plant to 91,963 square meters (the equivalent of 17 football fields) has boosted the plant’s production capacity by 50 percent and increased the plant’s ability to supply nutrition products to Singapore and key markets such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam. The Pfizer Singapore Nutritional Plant achieves sustainability through the use of advanced technology aimed at maximizing energy efficiency and reducing waste. Over 50 percent of water used by the plant for maintenance purposes is recycled.

 

 

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GSK and EDB Commit US$35 million to Support Research in Green and Sustainable Manufacturing in Singapore
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) jointly awarded funding for eight research projects based in Singapore aimed at growing local capabilities and talent in green and sustainable manufacturing.


The first round of projects will receive close to US$3.5 million in funding under the US$24 million GSK-Singapore Partnership for Green & Sustainable Manufacturing. The partnership will be funded by GSK-EDB US$35 million joint fund to grow Singapore’s capabilities and talent base in green and sustainable manufacturing as well as healthcare policy. The joint fund is part of GSK-Singapore 10- year Strategic Roadmap to address the industry’s challenges and co-create innovative solutions.


The inaugural awards were presented today to the eight principal investigators from the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS). They will work on research projects in chemical-, physical-and bio-transformations to maximise resource efficiency and minimise waste generated during the manufacturing process. The eight lead investigators are expected to recruit 17 post-doctoral and PhD researchers.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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NUS Global Asia Institute Launched Initiative to Advance Public Health and Healthcare Delivery in Asia
The National University of Singapore (NUS) launched a new integrative initiative to improve public health and healthcare delivery in Asia. This effort was made possible with a funding of S$17 million over 10 years from the GSK-EDB Trust Fund, which was established as part of the GSK-Singapore 10-year Strategic Roadmap. The setting up of the NUS Initiative to Improve Health in Asia (NIHA) was announced by Singapore Health Minister Mr Khaw Boon Wan at the East Asia Healthcare Policy Dialogue, a symposium organised at the sidelines of the ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting.


This new initiative aims to make a significant contribution to thinking and policy-formulation in public health and health systems development in Asia, and to elevate Singapore to a leading position in healthcare policy and related research. NIHA will be coordinated by the NUS Global Asia Institute (NUS-GAI), in collaboration with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and the NUS Business School.


NIHA will focus on three key areas, namely research, high-level policy forums and leadership programmes. It will facilitate highly multi-disciplinary collaborative research by experts in the healthcare policy field within NUS, including the Faculties, Schools and Centres of Excellence; and the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, as well as other institutions in Singapore and internationally with the relevant expertise, such as the Health Sciences Authority Academy. NIHA’s research will have a regional orientation and application.

 

 

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Biotech Spin-off from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Raised US$6 million in Venture Funding
Visterra, Inc., Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, and the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF) announced the creation of Visterra Singapore Pte. Ltd. This new biotechnology company will apply Visterra’s proprietary platform technology for the discovery and development of revolutionary new therapies, diagnostics and vaccines for challenging infectious diseases such as influenza and dengue fever.


Visterra, Inc. (formerly Parasol Therapeutics), based in Cambridge, MA and an MIT spin-off, has received US$6m in venture funding from Flagship Ventures, Lux Capital and Polaris Venture Partners, all based in the United States. The company focuses on technologies that can interrogate how pathogens interact with human cells, a critical first step in the disease process, to develop new treatments, diagnostics and vaccines. Visterra is a licensee to MIT patents arising from the laboratory of Professor Ram Sasisekharan, Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Biological Engineering and Health Sciences & Technology at MIT.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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Designed-in-Singapore Infant Heel Incision Device Launched in North America and Europe
MediPurpose®, a Singapore-based medical device innovation and medical product distribution company, announced the launch of its latest safety medical product, the babyLance™ heel incision device for infants in North America and Europe. The babyLance™ heel incision device provides better control in drawing blood from newborn infants for various tests, removing the need for conventional needle-pricking of fingers.


Designed and invented by Mr Sun Jian Ping, a research scientist seconded from the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, (A*STAR), the babyLance™ heel incision device, uses an innovative activation mechanism to improve the incision performance.  It reduces the penetration depth thus avoiding puncturing any soft bone tissue of the infant.  The design of babyLance™ delivers incision depths that are optimal for infant heel sticks through a pendulum cutting action which creates a single perfect cut, reducing the pain during incision.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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A*STAR Announced Influenza Vaccine Collaboration with Cytos Biotechnology
Switzerland’s Cytos Biotechnology and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) jointly announced their first collaboration on a virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine. This partnership, which involves academic and clinical partners across Singapore , aims at research, development and commercialisation of a VLP vaccine  to manage influenza infections. This collaboration could potentially secure an independent supply of vaccines for Singapore and other ASEAN countries to protect against seasonal influenza and future pandemics and extends Cytos’ R&D pipeline.


Under this agreement, Cytos Biotechnology will work with A*STAR’s Experimental Therapeutics Centre (ETC) and Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) to develop and produce a VLP based vaccine targeting the influenza hemagglutinin protein. The vaccine candidate will then be further evaluated in pre-clinical safety and efficacy studies by DSO National Laboratories (DSO). Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore and the Singapore Clinical Research Institute will then conduct a proof-of-concept study to evaluate the safety of the vaccine and its capacity to induce virus-neutralising antibodies (HI titers). Thereafter, Cytos will hold the worldwide, sub-licensable rights to further develop, manufacture and commercialise the vaccine while A*STAR subsidiaries will be entitled to produce the vaccine for Singapore and other ASEAN countries.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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Genome Institute of Singapore Partners Life Technologies to Develop New DNA Sequencing Protocols
The Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a biomedical research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore (A*STAR) announced that it is collaborating with Life Technologies Corporation to develop multiple new SOLiD™ system-specific protocols focused on paired-end-Tags (PET).  Such protocols allow better understanding of the genetic basis of diseases such as cancers, leading to improved diagnosis and treatment.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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Singapore Scientists Published Three Breakthrough Findings in Cancer Research
Scientists from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) made three successive breakthroughs in key areas of cancer research. Their work are published in top scientific journals Cancer Cell, Nature Cell Biology, and Cancer Research.


A team of scientists led by Dr Zeng Qi, from A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) has made a discovery about how PRL-3, a protein that plays a key role in tumorigenesis and cancer metastasis, is regulated in the body by PCBP1. Together with her collaborator Dr. Leah Vardy from A*STAR’s Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), the scientists found that PCBP1 impedes the translation of PRL-3 mRNA. Their discovery, published in the leading journal Cancer Cell, sheds light on the role of PRL-3 in cancer and suggests possible ways to prevent metastasis, arguably the most pernicious and harmful aspect of the disease.


Another team of scientists from IMCB led by Dr Vinay Tergaonkar have discovered a protein, Rap1, which plays an important role in breast cancer. Their work, published in Nature Cell Biology showed that the presence and abundance of Rap1 could serve as biomarkers of various human illnesses including breast cancer. They also found that Rap1 could protect cancer cells from self-programmed cell death and that Rap1 levels in breast tumours might be responsible for cancer cell metastasis, making the protein an excellent target for cancer therapies.


The third team of scientists led by Dr Francoise Thierry of IMB discovered that the human papillomavirus (HPV) E2 protein could be used for the early detection of HPV. Their work, published in Cancer Research, is a step forward in the fight against cervical cancer, the second cause of death by cancer in women worldwide. Dr Thierry, together with Drs Jeffrey Low and Diana Lim of the National University Health System, Singapore, showed that HPV detection methods based on HPV E2 were more sensitive than methods based on detection of the HPV DNA. Furthermore, the presence of HPV E2 was intimately linked to the progression of cervical cancer, and could therefore help to control the progression of the disease.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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Scientists in Singapore and Sweden Find Link between Estrogen Metabolism Pathway and Breast Cancer Risk
Scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a biomedical research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, recently discovered that DNA polymorphisms related to the production of estrogen play an important role in the development of hormone-sensitive breast and endometrial cancer. The knowledge gained may help develop better measures for the prevention and treatment of breast cancer.


This study is the most comprehensive genetic research of the estrogen metabolism pathway involving 7577 participants from Sweden and Finland. It is able to overcome many limitations of previous studies which usually investigated a limited number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within some candidate genes through single SNP analysis, often in a moderate number of study subjects, leading to inconsistent results across different studies.


Led by GIS Executive Director Prof Edison Liu, GIS Senior Group Leader Dr Liu Jianjun and Prof Per Hall, Medical Director of the Karolinska Institutet, the finding was published in PLoS Genetics on July 1, 2010.


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SingHealth Officially Opened its Investigational Medicine Unit
SingHealth’s dedicated early phase clinical research unit was officially opened in July 2010.  The SingHealth Investigational Medicine Unit has already attracted more than 20 clinical trials, some 40% of which are trials initiated by local clinician-scientists. Clinical trials currently hosted by the SingHealth Investigational Medicine are in the areas of haematology, oncology, gastroenterology, cardiology, psychiatry; circadian "sleep-wake" cycles and studies involving medical devices for nephrology and interventional radiology.


Located at the heart of SGH Campus, the SingHealth Investigational Medicine Unit harnesses the expertise of more than 40 medical disciplines and the high patient numbers visiting SingHealth institutions. On average, as a group, SingHealth institutions see 4.3 million patient visits a year. 


The $20million, 32-bed facility, which includes two state-of-the-art chronobiology suites, is funded over 5 years by SingHealth, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences and the National Medical Research Council.


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Singapore Announced S$10 million Funding for Silver-Community Test-Bed Programme
The Singapore Government is tripling funding support for the Silver Community Test Bed Programme to $10 million over the next two years. The third grant call for proposals was launched and will focus on “Enabling Community Healthcare and Wellness”.  The call will provide funding support for innovative and affordable solutions, which enable seniors to live and remain in the community, across the health and social care continuum.


Supported for the first time by EDB-MOH Health & Wellness Programme Office (HWPO), this is a key step in Singapore’s whole-of-government approach to develop innovative healthcare technologies, products and services for the silver community.  The Programme presents a unique platform for companies to test and develop their health and wellness innovations at proof-of-concept stage in public hospitals, community hospitals, elder care facilities and public households.

 

 

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National Neuroscience Institute Neurologist Elected into American Neurological Association
Associate Professor Tan Eng King, Senior Consultant, Neurology Department, the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) - Singapore General Hospital campus, is the first Singaporean doctor to be elected to the American Neurological Association (ANA), after securing a majority vote from ANA members, selection committee and executive council. ANA in their statement has cited Dr Tan’s "substantial contributions to academic Neurology and Neuroscience" and "promise for continued leadership in the field" for the selection.


Associate Prof Tan is a National Medical Research Council clinician scientist and a faculty at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. His primary research interests are in genetic epidemiology and the molecular mechanism underpinning disease causing genes in Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, clinical and imaging trials in neurodegenerative diseases. Associate Prof Tan has received support for his research from SingHealth Services, Singapore General Hospital and Singapore Millennium Foundation.


For more info, please click here.

 

 

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To find out more about Singapore’s Biomedical Sciences scene,
please visit www.biomed-singapore.com, www.sedb.com/medtech or www.sedb.com/healthcare


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Last updated:20 August 2010
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