Featured Stories | Singapore Economic Development Board

Trusted Base for Industry Leaders

Lonza Group, a Swiss contract supplier to the pharmaceutical industry, made its debut on the Singapore Exchange as the first Swiss-listed company with a secondary listing in Singapore. The company intends to tap into Asia’s capital market and harness support from investors to ride on Asia's growth.

Merck, Sharpe & Dohme (MSD) decided to expand its presence in Singapore through new manufacturing, marketing and research investments to provide a long-term vision for its operations in Singapore. This would include US$250 million investments over ten years to expand its manufacturing operations for new technology capability for product launches, S$700 million on local research activities and training collaborations between Singapore and its global sites. This brings the total MSD workforce in Singapore to approximately 1,500 employees with total investment value to date at US$1.1 billion.

World-Class Clinical Excellence

The Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI) launched and now leads the Singapore Biomedical R&D Consortium, comprising Dx assays, A*STAR’s Experimental Therapeutics Centre, Maccine, MerLion Pharmaceuticals and PWG Genetics, to provide a depth of integrated services from early product development, preclinical to late-phase clinical research in partnership with companies.

US clinical research organization PAREXEL and the National University of Singapore's Academy of GxP Excellence (NUSAGE) have established an academic programme for clinical researchers to meet the increasing demand for clinical research talent in Asia. This is PAREXEL’s first in Asia and second globally.

Homegrown Innovation

Homegrown companies and research institute are garnering international recognition for their innovative research. They include Aslan Pharmaceuticals, Temasek Life Sciences, SingVax and Maccine.

Aslan Pharmaceuticals completed its Series A fundraising providing US$12 million for its first compounds, including a 2011 partnership to develop Bristol-Myers Squibb’s BMS-777607 for the treatment of solid tumours.

Temasek Life Sciences Ventures and US Emergent Biosciences formed a joint-venture EPIC BIO to develop, commercialise and manufacture a multivalent, cross-protective human vaccine against pandemic influenza by H5 strains.

Inviragen merged with SingVax to create a company with a range of vaccines for infectious diseases for emerging economies including vaccines against West Nile, chikungunya, avian (H5N1-) and swine-origin (H1N1) influenza, combination plague and smallpox for biodefense. Inviragen completed a memorandum of understanding with Duke-National University of Singapore (Duke-NUS) to understand transmission and intervention measures for emerging infectious diseases such as dengue fever, hand, foot & mouth disease and chikungunya.

Maccine and A*STAR's Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (SBIC)'s collaboration to form the Translational Imaging Industrial Lab (TIIL) will yield a suite of preclinical imaging services, from small mammal to large animal, for partnership with global pharmaceutical companies.

A*STAR's Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) partnered French Servier to develop anti-cancer monoclonal antibodies to suppress tumour-initiating cells to prevent relapse and metastasis in cancer breast cancer. SIgN had also discovered two new fully-human monoclonal antibodies against chikungunya in collaboration with French Vivalis.

Regional Centre to Promote Best Practices

The National University of Singapore Academy of GxP Excellence (NUSAGE) was set up in 2008 to promote Good Practices in Manufacturing (GMP), clinical research (GCP) and health product safety or vigilance (GVP). Collaborating between key industry leaders, leading government agencies and the National University of Singapore, NUSAGE is one of the first industry-wide training initiatives in the region and complements company specific training centres in Singapore. NUSAGE also provides basic training for people who are interested to join the industry.