Speech By Mr Ong Ye Kung, Minister For Health, At The Official Launch Of The Consortium For Clinical Research And Innovation, Singapore (CRIS), 6 April 2022

Professor John Lim
Chairman, CRIS

Dr Danny Soon
CEO, CRIS

Colleagues, guests, ladies and gentlemen,

1               It gives me great pleasure to join you this morning for the official launch of the Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation, Singapore (CRIS).

2               Over the past decades, Singapore has developed a world-class healthcare system, with leading clinicians and advanced infrastructure, and grounded on sound policies and practices. As a result, we can deliver quality healthcare that is affordable and sustainable over the long term.

3               More than 20 years ago, we identified sustained investment in R&D as a key pillar of Singapore’s economic development strategy. The Government hence launched the biomedical sciences initiative, to build up the biomedical industry as the fourth pillar of the economy.  Our emphasis is not just blue skies research, but also applied clinical research.

4               With this, improvement in healthcare delivery system and R&D investment in the advancement of medical science become complementary and strategic initiatives, to create economic opportunities and strengthen healthcare capabilities for the benefit of our people in Singapore.

CRIS

5               Over the years, by sustaining this approach, we build up scientific excellence, robust infrastructure, a pipeline of talent for biomedical research, development of commercial enterprises and projects.

6               Set up in 2020, CRIS plays an important role in shepherding all our biomedical initiatives.  It has been bringing together various national level R&D initiatives and clinical services, establishing them as business units, and facilitating synergistic collaboration between them. Today, let me highlight some of the good work achieved by the various business units.

Singapore Clinical Research Institute

7               First, the Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI). It is the longest established entity within CRIS since 2008, supporting clinical trials for researchers.

8               SCRI has introduced and proliferated leading-edge capabilities in clinical research. One such example is REDCAP, a secure web-based application, which supports data capture for research studies. It is now widely used by our clinician researchers at our local hospitals.

9               When COVID-19 emerged in Singapore in 2020, these capabilities were put to good use. SCRI supported the National Centre for Infectious Diseases in several clinical trials of anti-COVID medications like Eli Lilly’s antibody cocktail and small molecule antivirals like Remdesivir. By conducting these trials locally, severely ill COVID-19 patients had early access to the medicines. The data generated from these trials also contributed towards the prompt global registration of these life-saving drugs.

10            Looking ahead, SCRI will continue to play a role in growing our clinical research capabilities. It is now working with a local medical start-up to testbed a patient-matching platform that could significantly enhance the initiation, screening and enrolment of patients into oncology trials. Public healthcare investigators will gain access to a larger, cross-institutional patient pool for oncology trials.

National Health Innovation Centre Singapore

11            Next is the National Health Innovation Centre Singapore (NHIC), established in 2014. Its role is to translate innovation into commercial enterprises and products.

12            An example of a game changing medtech product, which NHIC supported, is the SELENA+, Singapore Eye Lesion Analyser. The existing model of screening for diabetic retinopathy is resource intensive and time consuming, requiring manual examination of patients’ retinal images.

13            A team of researchers from the Singapore Eye Research Institute and the NUS School of Computing then developed SELENA+, which uses Artificial Intelligence to analyse retinal images for signs of eye diseases, within minutes. SELENA+ has been deployed nationwide to more than 20 private optometric practices. It has improved the quality and throughput of retinal screening and reduced the complications of diabetes.

Precision Health Research, Singapore

14            The healthcare needs and research landscape are constantly evolving and becoming more complex, given our ageing population. With rising prevalence of chronic conditions and late-stage diseases, we will need better treatments and early intervention that produce improved health outcomes. This brings me to the next three business units that are newly established.

15            Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE) was set up to implement the national precision medicine strategy. This means using technology to customise healthcare, potentially down to the individual, instead of a one-treatment-for-all model.

16            The key ingredient of precision medicine is data. It is similar to how various websites are able to customise your suggestions to you as an individual customer, because it has a lot of data on the habits and preferences of all its users, such that it can figure out what you most likely want to buy.

17            But in precision medicine, the data needed is not shopping preferences of people, but the data needed is genetic data. In 2019, the Precision Medicine programme established the world’s largest genetic databank for multi-ethnic Asian populations, comprising the data of 10,000 Singaporeans.

18            PRECISE is currently working with different partners to build up lifestyle, environmental and clinical data to gain insights into the factors that contribute to diseases and conditions prevalent in Asia. This is potentially a very rich source of knowledge, to help us prevent diseases through early intervention in lifestyle adjustments. PRECISE has identified five clinical implementation pilots to help determine the best preventive care practices. I look forward to PRECISE contributing to our Healthier SG strategy.

Singapore Translational Cancer Consortium

19            Next, in the field of cancer, we have the Singapore Translational Cancer Consortium (STCC). It will further strengthen Singapore’s contribution to international cancer research, and it has been contributing over the past two decades.

20            STCC was established in 2020 as an integrated platform to coordinate cancer research and translation at the national level. In November 2020, STCC coordinated an MOU¹ to initiate a multi-institute national precision oncology study involving the National Cancer Centre Singapore, National University Cancer Institute and Roche.

21            I am glad to learn that STCC will take this partnership further, to create a national, anonymised clinico-genomic database that combines clinical insights and real-world evidence to yield better patient outcomes. This will raise cancer research capabilities in Singapore to the next level.

Advanced Cell Therapy and Research Institute, Singapore

22            Finally, the Advanced Cell Therapy and Research Institute, Singapore (ACTRIS). This is a very fast-moving field in medical science, that may revolutionise healthcare.

23            In recent years, cell therapies have come to the fore as highly effective treatments for several cancers, with the promise of more cures to come. However, these therapies are very costly to develop and manufacture, requiring advanced technologies and specialised staff with skills that are difficult to come by.

24            ACTRIS was set up to develop these capabilities. In partnership with other local institutes such as A*STAR and the universities, it will testbed and validate new manufacturing technologies, and design and develop cost effective production solutions.

25            ACTRIS will also work with NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine to launch a certification course on the Principles and Practice of Cell Therapy, as a first step to build up the niche expertise and know-how to manufacture and administer cell therapy products.

26            In this field, as we develop, we have to be guided by policies as well. There needs to be a whole new set of government policies, and the policies will in turn, have to be guided by ethics. Our ethics committee has a very important part to play. In this context, just several weeks ago, I had a long discussion with former chairman of our bioethics committee, Dr Richard Magnus. Unfortunately, he has passed away. I think he left behind the institution and committee with a lot of wisdom that will have to guide us in this field.

Closing

27            With over two decades of investment in the biomedical sciences, we are now seeing greater innovation and translation and significant growth of our healthcare research ecosystem. CRIS and its business units play a critical role in this.  You are in a unique position to forge synergies, harness complementarities of various initiatives and efforts to grow this industry sector and deliver better outcomes. 

28            Just reflecting on Healthier SG, and standing here today launching CRIS, no matter what breakthrough research and discovery you have, you cannot produce practical outcomes without proper ground execution. No matter how good our ground execution is, it cannot make sense, and you cannot deliver outcomes too, without guidance from science, discovery and innovation. The entire MOH ecosystem must work together. And that is our job, collectively.

29            Congratulations to CRIS on the opening of your office. It is in Rochester Park. This is One-North, one degree north of the equator, where life-changing scientific breakthroughs are quietly taking place, in the wonderful place called Singapore. I wish you every success in your journey to help transform healthcare for Singapore.

[1] Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) – Ref: https://www.stcc.sg/post/new-personalised-healthcare-partnership-formed-to-improve-outcomes-for-people-with-cancer-in-sg