Remaking the Biomedical Landscape in Singapore

Last week was a watershed week in terms of the biomedical industry (at least in my humble opinion)

It was announced that A*STAR would be making sweeping changes to further make advances in the translational research work, implementing what BMRC had been doing for the past couple of years, but with more focus of moving the research from the lab to the bedside.

While noble, I see hurdles to achieving this dream and it is something that I AM sure that the wisely advisory committee and the reknowed scientists at A*STAR are already thinking of how to overcome.

1) What happens once institutional research funding is completed?
While A*STAR and presumable NRF and the MOH will be ploughing money in during the research phase of the program, taking the lab results to a wider scale clinical trial would require a lot of funding. In the US, most of this is partially paid for using private capital as well as grants from the NIH. How would this be done in Singapore?

It would be foolhardy to depend solely on the government to take up the slack for such funding, but the truth is (as I have been saying upteenth time) is that there is a lack of private investors with the appetite to take on such an endevour.

THis remains to be seen of what will happen to the effort. I was once told that San Diego became a hotbed of biotech primarily there was a steady stream of VCs and private money, plus support from the local institutions to take out commercializable technologies to the early clinical trial phase, after which the big pharma companies came in with their multi-billion kitty to sign licensing deal to take the drug further into the clinical trial stage.

It would be an imperative that Singapore ought to mimic the lifecycle of San Diego in this respect.

2) Small population means inadequate datasets for researchers.
While Singapore may be rich in terms funding, it does have a weakness: small population.

Recruitment for clinical trials are a big headache in Singapore primarily because the population is so small and the need to find the proper metrics would mean that a very small percentage of the population is eligible to participate in ground-breaking clinical trials.

Case in point: I had the opportunity to speak with a couple of the researchers working in the neuro area and I was asking them that if they had won this and that award, wouldn't that indicate that the technology was sound and thus commercializable? THeir take to me was that they are able to simulate a lot of things on the computer, but require hard data (from humans) to correlate with their findings and it is the lack of the cooperation that hampers further commercialization of this technology.

To do this, the researchers need to be tied to a research or tertiary hospitals and unfortunately the only one around is NUH and NUS, and there is only a small clinical trial center there. THe other clinical trial center is in SGH though I am unsure what sort of trials they run there.

TO be successful, then it would be common sense to expand the clinical trial to beyond the shores of Singapore, but then it raises the issue of cross-border funding, ethics committee approval, oversight and recruitment.


But I think this is a move in the right direction, and I know that many top level people whom I have had a change of interacting with in the past have been advocating such a push, together with a sound investment theme to assist good targets and form a company to maximize the push through the clinical trial system with private money.

THese are interesting times as I see a deviation from the set standard rule of only attracting MNCs to locate into SIngapore. Now we are looking to start a mini San Diego and for the investment community, while perhaps another 2 years away, I do think this as exciting as there will be a need for biotech knowledgeable investors to take these technologies beyond our shores.