Stem Cell Central,American researchers--fed up with
politics getting in the way of science--are packing up and heading
to Singapore, which is delighted to have them
By BRYAN WALSH/ SINGAPORE TIME Magazine
Posted Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006
For a serial kidnapper, Philip Yeo looks harmless enough. But to
hear some people tell it, he's a dangerous man. Over the past six
years, Yeo has been roaming the world, trailing talented scientists
in Washington; San Diego; Palo Alto, Calif.; Edinburgh and
elsewhere, and spiriting them back to his home country of
Singapore. Like any proud collector, Yeo never tires of ticking off
his most prized trophies: former National Cancer Institute star
Edison Liu, American husband-and-wife team Nancy Jenkins and Neal
Copeland, British cancer researcher David Lane. "I'm a people
snatcher," he says unashamedly.
What distinguishes Yeo from other kidnappers, of course, is that
his targets go willingly. They happily relocate to Singapore's new
2 million-sq.-ft. Biopolis research center, where they can
concentrate on one thing they can't always study so easily back
home: stem cells. Just last week President George W. Bush used the
first veto of his presidency to block a congressional action that
would have lifted his 2001 ban on federal funding for most
stem-cell research, ensuring that cell lines will remain scarce and
money short at research centers lacking the state funding or
private wealth to thumb their nose at dollars from
Washington.
While Bush's action infuriated U.S. scientists, political catfights
aren't the only things that make stem-cell research a challenge.
The science is complex, the cost is high, and the efforts are
scattered all over the world. Enter Singapore, which has begun
offering itself as a combination sanctuary and think tank for
scientists in the field.
The idea that buttoned-up Singapore, better known for punitive
caning and a onetime ban on chewing gum, should emerge as a center
of enlightenment seems unlikely. But the government sees both
scientific and fiscal promise in the biomed field. This month,
Singapore announced a doubling of its R&D budget, to $8.2
billion over the next five years, making it a regional research
hub, particularly in stem cells. That's attractive to frustrated
American scientists--and worrisome to people who want to see the
U.S. retain its scientific edge.
"I think there is a risk of a brain drain, and we are seeing it,"
says Christopher Thomas Scott, executive director of the Stanford
Program on Stem Cells in Society. Yeo, for one, is blunt about
taking advantage of the American political climate. "I go to the
U.S., and I tell those scientists, Come to Singapore and finish
your work," he says.
Singapore's leadership in stem-cell research is not new. In 1994,
Ariff Bongso, a Sri Lanka--born embryologist at the National
University of Singapore, became the first person to isolate human
embryonic stem cells, and in 2002 he discovered a way to grow
stem-cell lines without the use of animal cells, which could make
it easier to find clinical uses in human beings. Bongso achieved
those breakthroughs nearly alone, but that would not be the case
anymore, thanks to Biopolis, the government's $300 million bet on
bioscience.
A group of seven asymmetrical buildings with sci-fi names like
Nanos and Proteos, all connected by transparent sky bridges,
Biopolis is meant to be a self-enclosed science city, housing
government research institutes, biotech start-ups and global drug
companies. At the ground level, researchers from some 50 countries
meet and mingle over spicy laksa noodles, Philly cheesesteaks and
German beer, discussing projects in English, the most widely spoken
language in the multiethnic city. Inside, the well-stocked labs
positively gleam. Ng Huck Hui, a team leader at the Genome
Institute of Singapore, points to an expensive array of
semiconductors. "We bought that three years ago, so by our
standards it's pretty old," he says. "Might be time to get a new
one." Says Lane, the Edinburgh expat who moved to Singapore in 2004
to head the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology: "The funding
here is extremely good. You're in scientific heaven."
And it's only getting better. Late last year the government
launched the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, chaired by Cambridge
University--based stem-cell scientist Roger Pederson, which will
set aside $45 million for research in the field over the next three
years. Money also comes from university grants and offshore
organizations like the U.S.-based Juvenile Diabetes Research
Foundation. The diabetes group has helped fund biotech start-up ES
Cell International (ESI), home to Briton--and now Singapore
resident--Alan Colman, who was part of the British team that cloned
Dolly the sheep in 1996. ESI manufactures its own
embryonic-stem-cell lines and is working on shaping those cells
into insulin-producing pancreatic tissue and cardiac muscle, which
could be given to patients suffering from diabetes or heart
disease. It's exactly the kind of potentially profitable research
Singapore wants, and the company hopes to begin clinical trials
next year. As with most stem-cell work at Biopolis, the focus at
ESI is on building a broad business. Rather than designing
patient-specific stem cells, grown from the very people who would
later use them, ESI wants to create an inventory of more
generalized cells that could be matched to a population of
patients--the stem-cell equivalent of a blood bank.
"I think Singapore punches well above its weight in this area,"
says Colman. "That's why I'm here." Another reason is Singapore's
liberal regulations, which allow stem cells to be cultured from
embryos up to 14 days old, although reproductive cloning is
strictly illegal.
Given its small size, Singapore will never really threaten the
U.S.'s overall biomedical muscle, nor is it trying to. But it's
impossible to witness the buzz at Biopolis or meet scientists who
have chosen Southeast Asia over Stanford and not wonder how much
the U.S. could achieve in stem-cell research if it were as science
mad as this city-state of 4.4 million. For all the hundreds of
millions of dollars Singapore has devoted to high-tech lab
equipment and recruiting top scientists from around the world, it
is spending just as much to educate a homegrown core of young
Singaporean scientists to continue the work. Until they come of
age, Yeo will be just as happy to come shopping for talent in the
U.S. And as long as the stem-cell debate stumbles on in the U.S.,
American scientists will be just as happy to go.
Yeo recruits scientists from all over the world to Singapore's
labs
--Photo MUNSHI AHMED FOR TIME
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