Opening Address by Mr Chan Heng Kee, Permanent Secretary for Health, at the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Awards Ceremony and Research Symposium 2018, 17 April 2018

Director of Medical Services, A/Prof Benjamin Ong

Chief Health Scientist, Prof Tan Chor Chuan

Chairman of NMRC, Prof K. Ranga Rama Krishan

Colleagues, Ladies & Gentlemen

1.    A very good morning.  I am delighted to join you at this National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Awards Ceremony and Research Symposium 2018. Let me extend a special welcome to our international speakers and participants for the symposium.

2.    In healthcare, research is important in seeding new discoveries that can translate into better products, practices, policies and systems that are in line with our needs in the country. We also aspire for research that creates economic value for Singapore.

3.    At this platform last year, I shared the Ministry of Health’s priority diseases for research. We appointed taskforces, led by senior clinicians and scientists, to review the landscape and develop the roadmaps for each of the five areas, namely Diabetes; Infectious Diseases; Cancer; Cardiovascular Diseases; and Neurological and Sense Disorders. We subsequently appointed task forces led by senior clinicians and scientists to review the landscape and develop roadmaps for each of these areas.

New Open Fund-Large Collaborative Grant Awards

4.    We have adopted the themes and challenge statements developed by the taskforces for the Open Fund-Large Collaborative Grant, an important funding vehicle for health and biomedical science research.  I am happy to share that four teams have been awarded between $10 million to $25 million each over the 2017 and 2018 funding cycles.

5.    Last year, “DYNAMO” – which is short for Diabetes studY in Nephropathy And other Microvascular cOmplications” – was the sole grant recipient. This programme is led by investigators from all three of our medical schools together with public healthcare institutions, including the Singapore National Eye Centre and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.  The team is looking for new ways to prevent and treat kidney complications from diabetes among Singaporeans. Professor Tom Coffman will share more about their work at a session tomorrow. I am looking forward to DYNAMO adding some firepower to our ongoing War on Diabetes!

6.    This year, we have awarded grants to three new programmes.  The first is “The VICTORY” consortium - which stands for “Virus-Induced Cancer: Translational Oncology Research & immunologY".  This is led by researchers from the National Cancer Centre (NCC) and the National University Cancer Institute Singapore (NCIS), together with the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University and A*STAR colleagues.  They aim to tackle cancers triggered by viruses such as Hepatitis B, EBV^[1] or HPV^[2], which can transform normal cells into cancerous cells undetectable to our immune systems. An estimated 40% of Asian cancer cases fall into this category.  The team seeks to understand the cancer cells and their interactions with the immune cells so that they can be targeted and then destroyed by immunotherapies.  Professor Toh Han Chong from NCC is the Corresponding Principal Investigator for the consortium.  Prof Toh will also be receiving his second NMRC Clinician Scientist Award to develop novel treatments for liver cancer.

7.    The second new award recipient is the Translational Asian Age-related macular degeneration Programme (TAAP).  In our rapidly ageing society, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and the potential vision loss that comes from it is an issue of growing importance.  Associate Professor Gemmy Cheung from the Singapore Eye Research Institute, together with team members from our medical schools and hospitals, seeks to reduce vision loss and blindness from AMD and improve quality of life for patients with this disease. They will adopt a bench-to-bedside-to-population approach, and give particular focus on the clinical features, risk factors and treatment responses for Asians.

8.    The third new awardee will fight lung cancer.  Some of you may be surprised that lung cancer is still a leading cause of cancer deaths in Singapore. To be more specific, it is the number one cause of cancer death among our men and number two among our females^[3]. The majority of patients are non-smokers.  The programme will build upon results from ongoing research funded by the NMRC Translational & Clinical Research Flagship programme led by Associate Professor Tan Eng Huat from NCC.  Comprising investigators from both our cancer centres, A*STAR and Duke-NUS Medical School, the team will look into the use of new anti-cancer drugs, and tools in genetic, experimental and computational analysis, to improve the survival outcomes of Singaporeans with lung cancer.

9.    Beyond showing significant potential impact, all four awardees have displayed a commitment towards genuine collaborations across agencies, across disciplines and across researchers.  These are the ingredients we look for in the Open Fund-Large Collaborative Grant, and what are important to give ourselves a better chance of research success. Please join me in congratulating all of our award recipients.  We look forward to hearing good progress from the teams.

Medical Technology and Innovation

10.    Beyond clinical research, innovations in medical technologies too can potentially improve patient care and health outcomes in cost effective ways.  We have had some encouraging stories. One example is the Singapore Eye Lesion Analyzer, or SELENA for short. SELENA is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) deep learning system for early detection of diabetic retinopathy and related eye diseases from retinal photographs. After showing good diagnostic accuracy, the system has been licensed to an MNC for commercialisation.  The SELENA team is also working with IHiS to operationalise it in the national diabetic retinopathy programme offered at our polyclinics. We may not be the first to use AI for retinopathy. But if we can deploy at a fast scale, who knows - we could be among the world's first AI-based nationwide screening programme for diabetic retinopathy.

11.    The seeds of such medical technologies and innovations often come from clinical and social care settings, when those directly serving patients seek for new technology ideas to improve their interventions.  To develop their ideas further and bring them to fruition, these clinicians often need some funding support and protected time.

12.    NMRC will support them with a new pilot Clinician Innovator Award.  This will support our clinicians to further develop their potentially impactful medical innovation ideas, while still spending the majority of their time on clinical care. The scheme will provide seed funding of $100,000 over two years per award, plus salary support for protected time for research^[4]. We will start modestly, setting aside close to $1.8 million to fund up to eight clinician innovators over three years, and see how the scheme progresses.

13.    The Clinician Innovator Award will fit nicely within the overall commercialisation pathway.  If the preliminary outcome from the funded project is encouraging, the grant recipients can apply for follow-on funding under the National Health Innovation Centre (NHIC) to work towards commercialisation.

Talent Development in Biomedical Research

14.    As we all know, the crux to promising and impactful research lies in having good people with deep skills.  Over the years, we have built up a base of clinician scientists and health professionals to spearhead health and biomedical research. There are more than 110 Clinician Scientists supported through the NMRC Human Capital Programmes^[5] in Singapore today. We hope to increase this number to 160 eventually.

15.    We remain committed to supporting these talents through NMRC’s funding programmes and awards.  These include talent development and human capital awards, fellowship and scholarship programmes, as well as manpower and research grant funding. NMRC will extend support to both budding as well as established clinician scientists.

16.    In conjunction with today’s event, some 60^[6] individual clinician-scientists will be receiving their NMRC awards.  Each has achieved tangible impact or made significant promise through their research. 

Conclusion

17.    In closing, I would like to congratulate all the recipients for this year’s NMRC awards. We look forward to your continued contributions to research excellence that can bring about better health outcomes and create economic value for Singapore and Singaporeans.

18.    On that note, I wish all of you a fruitful symposium. Thank you.

^[1] Epstein-barr virus 

^[2] Human papillomavirus 

^[3] Source: Singapore Cancer Registry, Annual Registry Report 2015 

^[4] Up to 0.3 Full Time Equivalent (FTE). 

^[5] NMRC Human Capital Awards are (i) Singapore Translational Research (STaR) Investigator, (ii) Clinician Scientist Award (CSA) and (iv) Transition Award (TA). 

^[6] A total of 63 individuals are awarded under the various NMRC Talent Development and Human Capital Programmes.