Editor’s Note
Leading companies made significant announcements in October – 3M opened its first drug delivery systems R&D Lab in Asia Pacific here in Singapore; Medtronic set up its regional and international headquarters in Singapore, and announced its new manufacturing facility for cardiac devices; Inviragen merged with SingVax and completed US$15 million Series A financing. In research, Singapore received OCED Mutual Acceptance of Data status, while scientists in Singapore published key findings that could advance cancer research and treatment. Singapore also commenced a longitudinal study on environmental factors that could cause obesity and metabolic diseases from early childhood. In addition, the public sector launched key initiatives to further enhance our manufacturing capabilities.

• Medtronic Sets up International Headquarters and Announces New Manufacturing Facility
• 3M Drug Delivery Systems Opens New Singapore Lab
• Inviragen Merges with SingVax and Completes US$15 million Series A Financing
• Duke/Singapore Scientists Find New Way to Classify Gastric Cancer
• A*STAR Scientists’s Landmark Finding of p53 Could Advance Cancer Research 
• Singapore Commences Longitudinal Study to Prevent Obesity and Metabolic Diseases from Early Childhood
• Singapore’s pre-clinical data recognised in OCED countries
• Singapore Opens Southeast Asia’s First Kilo Laboratory Facility
• Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology Launches Medtech Manufacturing Consortium

Medtronic Sets up International Headquarters and Announces New Manufacturing Facility
Medtronic, the global medical technology leader, held the official opening of its new offices which will oversee Medtronic’s operations in Asia and internationally (Latin America, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa and Middle East, Australia). Medtronic also announced the establishment of a new additional manufacturing facility (Medtronic Singapore Operations or MSO) in Changi South to meet anticipated demand for cardiac devices in Asia. The S$80 million manufacturing facility in Singapore will be a state-of-the-art facility adhering to Medtronic’s high quality, safety and compliance standards. The facility will produce select Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management (CRDM) devices and production is expected to commence the beginning of 2011.

3M Drug Delivery Systems Opens New Singapore Lab
3M Drug Delivery Systems opened its new laboratory site at the 3M Singapore facility in Yishun. The laboratory will develop products in both the Inhalation and Transdermal categories, complementing 3M Drug Delivery Systems’ well established global laboratory network. The new 3M Drug Delivery Systems Lab in Singapore also has the capacity and know-how to take unique formulations developed in the Asian region along the development path: from feasibility, development, manufacturing quality assurance as well as global regulatory expertise. This site will also play a vital role in the development of 3M’s innovative technologies, which can benefit patients worldwide.

Inviragen Merges with SingVax and Completes US$15 million Series A Financing
Colorado-based biotech Inviragen and SingVax have merged their complementary vaccine pipelines and their international product development capabilities to create a company that is developing a wide range of vaccines for infectious diseases prevalent in emerging economies. Concurrently with the merger, the combined company raised $15 million in a Series A equity investment from a syndicate of international venture capital investors, including Charter Life Sciences (Palo Alto, CA), Venture Investors (Madison, WI), Bio*One Capital (Singapore) and Phillip Private Equity (Singapore).

Duke/Singapore Scientists Find New Way to Classify Gastric Cancer
Scientists from the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS GMS) Singapore have discovered a new discovered a new way to classify stomach cancers. Published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Genetics, the research is based upon clinical findings from patients in Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom and represents the largest genomic analysis of gastric cancers to date. The new system classifies gastric cancers by the signaling pathways the tumors use to grow and spread, as opposed to the more traditional approach that describes them by cell type or structure. The new classification system offers physicians the opportunity to stratify patients according to their tumors’ pathway profiles and then apply the treatment that is designed to interrupt the signals those pathways use. 

A*STAR Scientists’s Landmark Finding of p53 Could Advance Cancer Research 
Scientists at A*STAR’s Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), led by Prof Ren Ee Chee, made a landmark discovery of how the master gene regulator, p53 could switch a gene in a cell ‘on’ or ‘off’ by recognising specific sequences of nucleotides in the gene’s DNA known as ‘response elements’. Since p53 undergoes mutations or deletions in over 50 percent of all cancers, the finding sheds more light on how cancer develops, and provides more intelligence in the global battle against this complex disease. Their findings were published this August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), and highlighted in Nature Reviews Cancer, the highest-impact monthly review journal in the field of oncology.

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Singapore Commences Longitudinal Study to Prevent Obesity and Metabolic Diseases from Early Childhood

Backed by mounting evidence that the environment in which a baby is conceived, born and grows up determines the child’s growth and development, a research team from the KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), the National University Hospital (NUH) and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS) under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) commenced a study to see profoundly environmental factors cause the development of diseases like obesity and diabetes. This study is one of the five Translational & Clinical Research Flagship Programmes launched in 2006.

The study will provide valuable information on early fetal influences, genetic, and childhood environmental predictors of development and childhood health. With the increased prevalent of obesity and diabetes in Asia and Singapore, there is a need to study the Asian Phenotype as much information about these diseases originates from studies conducted in the west, especially with research suggesting that the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of metabolic diseases could differ between Asians and Caucasians, and also differ between the various Asian ethnic groups.

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Singapore’s pre-clinical data recognised in OCED countries
Singapore has been accepted into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Mutual Acceptance of Data framework. With this OECD-MAD status, data from pre-clinical trials conducted by testing facilities in Singapore which are compliant with the requirements of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) will be accepted by some 30 OECD and non-OECD members, including the United States, European Union and Japan. Vaccines and drugs developed and tested in Singapore can now enjoy faster access to the world’s top biomedical markets.

Singapore Opens Southeast Asia’s First Kilo Laboratory Facility
The Kilo Lab, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, is a pilot-scale research facility that will develop new process research techniques and solve the problems of scale-up and manufacturing for the pharmaceutical industry. It also provides a platform to train and develop a new generation of engineers and chemists in Singapore, pacing industry trends and the latest technological advances.

For more info, please click here.

Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology Launches Medtech Manufacturing Consortium
In collaboration with key government agencies, the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) launched the Medtech Manufacturing Consortium. This consortium seeks to further enhance the capabilities of local precision engineering, material supplier and contract manufacturing companies in areas such as medical device design and development, supply chain management and process technologies in the manufacturing of small medical technology components and devices. To date, 26 global and local companies have signed up as members of the consortium. The industry, SIMTech and the Workforce Development Agency will spend S$ 10 million over the next five years for technology and manpower development.

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