The Singapore government has committed to a budget of close to US$8 billion for the 5-year period from 2006 to 2010 to further strengthen research and development (R&D) capabilities in the country.

This is almost double the government's R&D budget for 2001 to 2005. The biomedical sciences (BMS) sector will continue to be one of the key areas of focus for the city-state.
Singapore has already developed world-class capabilities across the entire value chain from drug discovery, product development and clinical research, to manufacturing and healthcare delivery. In a widely publicised 2006 study conducted by KPMG, Singapore also has the lowest cost structure among nine industrialized countries in North America, Europe and Asia for biomedical R&D and clinical trials as well as pharmaceuticals and medical devices manufacturing.

Singapore's vibrant and international research community, excellent science, strong intellectual property rights protection and pro-business regulatory infrastructure are key factors that attract multi national companies to establish R&D operations in the country.

In addition, Singapore has put in place a clear and transparent regulatory framework to ensure that research conducted in Singapore is based on ethical and legal standards consistent with international practices. As a result, our biotechnology / pharmaceutical research landscape has grown significantly over the past 5 years. Currently, more than 20 companies have established drug discovery operations in Singapore including Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis.

With the next phase of R&D funding, Singapore is poised to build on its position as a leading global biomedical hub in Asia. It will support research in areas such as stem cells, infectious diseases and diagnostics. Singapore already hosts a broad base of stem cell research activities.

The Singapore Stem Cell Consortium (SSCC) was established to coordinate, fund and advance this work. It will focus on support not just basic research but also translational and clinical R&D. SSCC will also establish key infrastructure and resources such as a a national stem cell bank and a cGMP cell processing facility. Stem cell companies in Singapore such as CellResearch Corporation, Cygenics, ES Cell International and Viacell will benefit from this increased focus.

In the area of infectious diseases, the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) is one of several research centres in Singapore conducting research on diseases endemic to the region. NITD has started by focussing on dengue fever and tuberculosis. After only two years of operations, NITD has discovered and are developing two compounds that appear to target multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

It has also broken new ground in terms of understanding the dengue fever mechanism through sequencing the genome of the virus.

In the area of self-diagnostics, two Singapore companies have made significant advances in developing highly promising products. Rockeby Biomed has launched 4 rapid diagnostic tests for the early detection of a number of diseases including avian flu, HIV and vaginal thrush. Another company, Veredus Laboratories, is supplying a WHO-endorsed diagnostic chip for detecting the avian flu virus based on primers developed by the Genome Institute of Singapore.

R&D is the foundation of the biotechnology industry. Singapore offers the right combination of scientific talent and world-class infrastructure to conduct cutting-edge research. The Government's new R&D budget further underlines Singapore's long term commitment to invest the necessary resources towards supporting research. Over the next five years, Singapore will aim to further strengthen its core scientific capabilities as well as translate research outputs into clinically relevant and commercially viable applications.

At the launch of Singapore's BMS initiative in mid-2000, the goal was to double the BMS industry's annual manufacturing output from S$6 billion then to S$12 billion (US$7.4 billion) by 2005. Last year, the biomedical manufacturing output reached S$18 billion (US$11.4 billion), exceeding the target by 50 per cent. Singapore is aiming now to hit S$25 billion by 2015.