Ride For Life: Gene institute gathers experts

Stem-cell research has been touted as the Holy Grail of the life sciences because it holds the promise of curing fatal diseases and creating replacement body parts. The Straits Times takes a look at the ambitious investigations into stem cells now getting off the ground at the Genome Institute of Singapore.

THE Genome Institute of Singapore is gathering a team of experts from all over the world to build up a formidable force in stem-cell research.

When up and running next year, the institute's stem-cell group, with about five principal investigators and 20 researchers, will be one of the biggest consolidated teams in Singapore.

Drawing from an international pool of experts, the team will add to the pockets of excellence in stem-cell research here.

Scientists are already doing groundbreaking work in the field at places like the National University of Singapore (NUS) and private companies such as ES Cell International. For example, Professor Ariff Bongso of NUS announced to the world recently that he had succeeded in developing a new method of creating stem cells. It produces cells that would be safe for human transplant because the process involves only human cells and absolutely no animal input.

The institute's team has already made some head way in turning stem cells into blood vessels.

It is also looking at how to reverse the process after the stem cells have changed into, say, liver or brain cells, reprogramming them back into primitive stem cells.

Said the head of the team, molecular biologist Lim Bing: 'If we can do this, it will mean that we could take any cell from a patient, change it back into a stem cell and use it to generate any cell needed for a particular disease.

'That's a tough proposition but very challenging.'

Dr Lim gave up a full-time position as Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School to become senior group leader of biological investigations at the institute.

He is following in the footsteps of cancer expert Edison Liu, who left a high-powered post at the United States National Cancer Institute to head the Genome Institute here.

A specialist in blood and blood diseases, Dr Lim was personally headhunted by Dr Liu last year, and is himself in the process of recruiting promising scientists from the US to join the team.

The Sabah-born researcher told The Straits Times that he was enticed to Singapore because of the country's strong research base, a pool of research expertise that is growing all the time, and the fewer constraints here on human embryonic stem-cell research.

'The institute's robust genomics and bio-informatics facilities promise to provide an environment that is exciting and challenging, just waiting to be exploited and tested by one's creativity.

'There are not too many centres like this in the US,' he said.

Stem cells - in particular, embryonic stem cells drawn from early-stage embryos - are prized for their ability to turn into other cells, thus holding out the hope of cures for ailments like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Dr Lim said: 'The main problem now is that we do not know how to control these cells properly and make them change into the different tissues that we want.

'Our main focus will be to learn how to make the cells differentiate. One approach to this is to better understand the genes which are important in stem-cell growth and differentiation.'

To this end, it is building up a library of all the genes in stem cells, to get a clearer understanding of exactly what happens within such cells, and what makes them change.

It aims to collaborate with research institutes and companies here, including with Prof Bongso, the first researcher in the world to isolate embryonic stem cells.

The Genome Institute group will be getting embryonic stem cells from the Singapore-linked company ES Cell International, which also supplies such cells for federally-funded research in the United States.

Its work and plans will be presented to scientists at the 6th NUS-National University Hospital annual scientific meeting, which begins today.

The two-day meeting, which will feature more than 200 scientific papers, medical research and breakthroughs by doctors and scientists, will focus on key themes in the life sciences, including cancer, genomics and tissue engineering.