Singapore, UK Award Infectious Disease Research Grants As Singapore Continues To Build Biomedical Research Base

SINGAPORE - Singapore and the United Kingdom have awarded SGD$4.5 million ($3.2 million) in grants covering six infectious disease research projects conducted jointly by Singapore and UK universities. The diseases include gastric flu, hepatitis B, dengue fever and tuberculosis.

"The awarded projects [focus on] highly relevant areas of infectious disease, [and] are a result of collaborative efforts between teams with Singapore and the UK's top capabilities in both biomedical and engineering research," said Lee Eng Hin, executive director of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR).

The grants were awarded by A*STAR and the UK's Medical Research Council. An A*Star spokeswoman said there is no corporate involvement in the project.

"The six projects involve public research institutions in Singapore and the UK only, and have no MNC partners as yet," she said. "Of course, we hope that these collaborations will advance knowledge that in time lead to industry collaborations and significant clinical outcomes in terms of better and more cost-effective healthcare."

One of the grants was awarded to A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology and the UK's Imperial College London to research the signaling pathways employed by two rogue strains of gut bacteria Escherichia coli. One of the strains is a major cause of infantile diarrhea and mortality in developing countries.

"Working together with Imperial College, our team will use an award-winning infection research model to identify proteins and signal transduction pathways targeted by specific virulence proteins produced by the rogue bacteria, and thus elucidate their infection strategies," said IMB Principal Investigator Sohail Ahmed.

The other five grants will fund research into redirecting T cells to overcome tolerance in chronic HBV infections, modulating TB-HIV drug interactions by host genetic influences, analyzing regulatory T cells in streptococcal infection, studying antigenic variation in plasmodium vivax and determining the significance of efflux pumps in multi-drug resistance and pathogenesis.

Last month, A*STAR announced that its Biomedical Research Council and Singapore Immunology Network awarded grants to 12 Singapore-based research projects in the areas of infectious diseases and immunology.

Last year, biomedical funding in Singapore amounted to SGD$1.2 billion ($862.49 million) in total fixed-asset investment and SGD$700 million in total business spending.

Output of Singapore's biomedical manufacturing cluster increased 14.8 percent last year, according to Singapore's Economic Development Board. Within the cluster, the pharmaceuticals segment grew 15.6 percent (Also see "Singapore Gains Momentum As Major R&D, Manufacturing Hub; Sees Double-digit Pharma Sector Growth" - Scrip, 9 Apr, 2010.).

Stanford University's respected medical technology design program is placing its bet on Singapore as a portal into the rapidly growing Asian device market. Stanford University Biodesign opened up a satellite program in the bustling island nation earlier in the year.

The Singapore business community hopes it will soon be a feeder program for a burgeoning local device R&D and manufacturing industry. Stanford program leaders, meanwhile, see it as an in-road into one of the more active Asian countries in the biomedical space, as the financial and regulatory challenges to capitalize on medical innovations in the U.S. increase (Also see "Stanford Partners With Singapore On Device Design Training Program" - Scrip, 15 Feb, 2010.).

One of the biggest obstacles in getting research into development is intellectual property protection, Ed Liu, executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore told PharmAsia News in an earlier interview. He said Singapore has pumped $1.5 billion into translational research in the last two years to fund early-phase research to bring it to proof of concept.

However, for translational medicine to be optimal, a bidirectional flow of information should move "between the bench and the bedside," Liu said. "But that isn't happening, so far it is unidirectional, most often from the lab to Phase I," he said, while adding, "The biggest problem is the construct of IP [intellectual property]" (Also see "Singapore Offers Public Funds To Bridge Valley Of Death, But Can It Last?  – BioMedical Asia" - Scrip, 23 Mar, 2009.).

Pfizer became the first pharmaceutical company to be accredited by the U.S.-based Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs for its Phase I Clinical Research Unit in Singapore.

This is the only clinical research unit in Southeast Asia to secure certification, and Pfizer has the distinction of having the only pharmaceutical research unit in the world to be accredited under the scheme, according to Chong Chew Lan, medical director of the Singapore research unit (Also see "Pfizer Achieves Double Firsts With AAHRPP Status For Phase I Trials In Singapore" - Scrip, 7 Oct, 2009.).

Pfizer opened its Singapore clinical research unit in 2001, which conducts Phase I first-in-man studies only. Chong said the Singapore unit conducted 23 Phase I trials last year and plans to increase that number by 10 percent this year (Also see "Compounds Discovered In Asia Expected To Enter Clinic In Three Years, Pfizer Says" - Scrip, 9 Apr, 2010.).

- Gregory Waldron ([email protected])