Singapore's Highlights in Biomedical Sciences - September 2009

Lonza celebrated the groundbreaking for its new cell therapy facility in Tuas Biomedical Park

September 30, 2009

Editor’s Note
In September, Lonza celebrated the groundbreaking for its new cell therapy plant in Singapore, while PPD announced its new global central lab here. In the Biopolis, Waseda University opened its first overseas research institute and Carl Zeiss partnered Biopolis Shared Facility to introduce cutting-edge microscopy technologies for scientists based here. Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore also officially opened its campus next to Singapore General Hospital.

Lonza Celebrates Groundbreaking for Cell Therapy Plant
PPD Announces New Global Central Lab in Singapore
Waseda University Opens First Overseas Research Institute in Singapore
Carl Zeiss Partners Biopolis Shared Facilities
Novel Discovery in Ageing Skin
Tan Tock Seng Hospital Embarks on RFID Project to Enhance Patient Safety
Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Officially Opened
Karolinska Institutet and NTU Offers Joint PhD in Biomedical Sciences

Lonza Celebrates Groundbreaking for Cell Therapy Plant
Lonza Group Ltd celebrates the groundbreaking of the new facility for its Cell Therapy business, located at Tuas Biomedical Park in Singapore and adjacent to Lonza’s large-scale mammalian manufacturing facility. Construction will begin early in 2010 and the facility is expected to begin manufacturing therapies within the first two suites by mid-2011. The facility is designed to accommodate additional suites built to meet incremental customer demand. The total investment for the first phase will be approximately CHF 30 million.

In his welcome address to celebrate the groundbreaking ceremony, Stefan Borgas, CEO of Lonza, said: “This new Cell Therapy manufacturing facility is a next step in fulfilling our strategy to expand our capacity globally and our presence in Asia. Cell Therapy is expected to be one of the most important innovation drivers of modern medicine and this new facility reinforces Lonza’s leading position as a custom manufacturer of cellular therapeutics”.

PPD Announces New Global Central Lab in Singapore
Leading global contract research organisation, PPD, Inc. announced it has opened its global central lab facility in Singapore, strengthening its ability to provide biopharmaceutical clients an extensive range of customised laboratory services in Southeast Asia, a high-growth region for clinical research.

“Expanding our global central lab services into Singapore demonstrates our commitment to deliver high quality specimens and laboratory results for our clients in a growing biopharmaceutical market," said Steve Lobel, vice president, global laboratory operations, PPD. "We can expedite delivery of lab data through reduced transportation and shipping time at better logistics costs for our clients.”

PPD also has an office in Singapore where for more than 10 years it has provided a range of clinical development services, including clinical trial management and monitoring, patient recruitment, site identification and regulatory affairs. The laboratory instrumentation and standards in Singapore are identical to platforms located at PPD's global central labs in Brussels, Belgium; Highland Heights, Ky.; and Beijing, China.

Waseda University Opens First Overseas Research Institute in Singapore
Waseda University has set up the Waseda Bioscience Research Institute in Singapore (WABIOS) in Biopolis. WABIOS will focus its research in the areas of bioimaging, bioengineering, biophysics and nano-biotechnology. It will also develop the neuroscience-focused research findings derived from the Waseda-Olympus Bioscience Research Institute – a joint initiative between Waseda University and Olympus Corporation in Biopolis from 2004 – 2009. WABIOS has committed S$2 million for its research activities here and will start with a few researchers from both Japan and Singapore. The establishment of WABIOS is particularly significant in that it marks the first time that Waseda University is setting up research operations overseas independently.

The establishment of WABIOS in Singapore is a strategic move for Waseda University because it has been promoting internationalisation focused on the Asia-Pacific region. Singapore is well known as a crossroads of knowledge exchange between Japan, China and India and the West. WABIOS will function as a platform for academic exchange between researchers from Waseda University and A*STAR, and in the near future, the institute hopes to establish itself as an academic research centre for all the Japanese research organisations based in Singapore.

For more info, please click here.

Carl Zeiss Partners Biopolis Shared Facilities
Global market leader in microscopy solutions, Carl Zeiss MicroImaging, signed a MOU with Biopolis Shared Facilities (BSF), Agency for Science, Technology & Research. Under this partnership, Carl Zeiss will work closely with the BSF Advanced Microscopic Imaging Laboratory to introduce cutting edge technology to the Biopolis research community with systems on a rotational basis. In the coming year, Carl Zeiss will equip the facility with two million-dollar light microscopy systems; the SR-SIM (Superresolution Structured Illumination Microscopy) and PAL-M (Photoactivated Localization Microscopy) for scientists to work with their experiments.

For more info, please click here.

Novel Discovery in Ageing Skin
Scientists from Singapore and Germany have made a novel discovery that might lead to ways of reversing the effects of ageing and wrinkled skin. The international team of scientists led by Dr Bruno Reversade from A*STAR’s Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) discovered that mutations in the PYCR1 gene cause a rare genetic condition which results in premature skin ageing, known as “wrinkly skin syndrome”. Their findings, which are published in the 1 Sep 2009 print issue of the prestigious journal Nature Genetics, provide insight into how some unexpected genes help maintain youthful skin. This research project involved collaborations with over 15 hospitals and research centres in 13 countries. Dr Reversade was the inaugural recipient of A*STAR Investigatorship award, Singapore’s equivalent of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigatorship award.

For more info, please click here.

Tan Tock Seng Hospital Embarks on RFID Project to Enhance Patient Safety
Singapore’s National RFID Centre (NRC) has awarded an RFID Innovation Platform grant to Tan Tock Seng Hospital to enhance patient safety. The project will develop a very useful and practical tool to trace all stages of the sterilisation process from the point of use to decontamination of a surgical instrument set to ensure patient safety. With each instrument set embedded with an RFID tag, it is possible to track the movements of the instrument set by associating with the individual patient and staff that had come into contact with the set. This reduces the chain of transmission of hospital-acquired infections and halts the spread of infection. Patient safety is further assured through the tracking of the usage of surgical instruments whose lifespan can now be accurately determined and can be replaced promptly according to manufacturers’ specification.

Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Officially Opened
The Duke-National University of Singapore (Duke-NUS) Graduate Medical School officially opened its new state-of-the-art campus for medical education and research. This facility features technologically advanced research laboratories, modern teaching and education spaces, and a designated research center for genomic study and computational biology.

Located in close proximity to the Singapore General Hospital, the site fosters close collaborative efforts between researchers at Duke-NUS and Singapore Health Services' clinicians and clinician-scientists, who form the core of Duke-NUS' clinical faculty. Duke-NUS is committed to five Signature Research Programs, including emerging infectious diseases, cancer and stem cell biology, neuroscience and behavioral disorders, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, and health services and systems research.

Karolinska Institutet and NTU Offers Joint PhD in Biomedical Sciences
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore and Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet (KI), announced a new collaboration to jointly offer a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme in Biomedical Science. This collaboration with one of Europe's largest medical universities is testimony of the high stature NTU enjoys among the leading universities of the world. The programme commences in the 2009/2010 academic year.

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