Source: Bloomberg News

By Yoolim Lee

SINGAPORE — At Singapore's Bistro Fabulous, men and women from the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and China mingle with locals as they sip drinks and nibble on chicken satay and spring rolls.

It could be a typical bar scene, until you listen in on the conversations.

The topics include mouse embryonic progenitors and cellular pluripotency.

This is a meeting of the Stem Cell Club, whose members include researchers at the forefront of one of the most promising and controversial areas of science. They're in Singapore as part of its efforts to create a globally competitive biomedical industry.

The city-state has lured star scientists such as Alan Colman, who helped clone Dolly the sheep, and David Lane, who discovered a protein that suppresses some tumors.

"What creates good science is a good scientific community," says German researcher Gerald Udolph as he sips a Tiger beer at Bistro Fabulous' alfresco bar in the $300 million government-funded science park called Biopolis.

Singapore has spent more than $3 billion in a bid to transform its economy into one that relies less on manufacturing and more on fields such as research.

Science isn't an end in itself for Singapore. "I'm not interested in Nobel prizes — they're not tangible," says Philip Yeo, former chairman of the state's Agency for Science, Technology and Research. "Science is a means to upgrade the economy and create new jobs and new industries for long-term economic growth."

Yeo can already point to tangible results. Annual output of drugs and medical devices has quadrupled since 2000. In the same period, the country created 10,571 jobs.

Since 2001, more than 100 foreign drug makers and biomedical companies have set up factories here, attracted partly by patent enforcement that's the strictest in Asia.

Singapore is still a bit player in the global biotechnology industry. The U.S. accounted for 76 percent of biotech's $73.5 billion in global revenue last year, according to Ernst & Young LLP. Biotech companies raised almost $28 billion in investments and loans worldwide last year — the most since 2000, the year scientists first mapped a draft sequence of the human genome, setting off excitement about the potential to cure diseases through genetics.

Singapore faces stiff competition in its bid to commercialize stem cell-related research. Wealthy countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea are building stem cell industries of their own. All of them are competing with countries such as China, India and Thailand, some of which have already begun selling experimental stem cell therapies.

One area where Singapore is trying to distinguish itself is in stem cell research. Embryonic stem cells, which are the human raw materials that can grow into heart muscle, nerves or other organs, have the ability to divide and renew themselves indefinitely.

Understanding how the cells do this, scientists say, could hold the key to treating conditions including diabetes, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. The cells could also be used to test new drugs.

In addition, scientists are doing research on adult stem cells, which can sometimes repair tissues that have become diseased or damaged.

"In the long term, stem cells have a tremendous potential," says William Chia, senior principal investigator at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, the research institute sponsored by Singapore's state investment company.

Developing actual products that can pay back the investment could be years or decades away, Chia says. "There is this short-term view of 'Wow, this is potentially possible in three years or five years,' '' says Chia. "It's almost never realistic."

The research is also contentious. Some stem cells are derived from embryos that are donated or discarded by couples undergoing fertility treatments.

In the U.S., President Bush has said such experiments pose a "moral hazard" and cut off U.S. funding for research on all but existing stem cell lines. Germany and Italy also restrict the use of human embryonic stem cells in research.

Singapore attracts researchers from around the world with fewer restrictions on stem cell research and the government's promise to limit the time they'll need to spend on academic bureaucracy.

"The U.S. is really messing up big-time," says Lane, a founder of Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals Inc., a New Jersey-based developer of cancer treatment drugs.

Biopolis is buzzing with about 2,000 scientists, technicians and administrators from more than 50 countries. The 2 million-square-foot complex houses five public research institutes.

One of the recruits is Edison Liu, a prize-winning breast cancer researcher from the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Liu said he liked Singapore's vision of transforming its economy. Most of all, he was attracted by the funding the government would give to his projects. Liu accepted a position as executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore, which focuses on cancer biology, infectious diseases, stem cell research and the genetics of pan-Asian populations.

"Here, I feel that I'm doing something very innovative,'' says Liu, who became a permanent resident of Singapore this year. "I wouldn't be anywhere else right now."

Cloning expert Colman moved to Singapore from the U.K. in 2001. He was attracted by the prospect of raising funds for his stem cell research.

Obtaining private financing didn't turn out to be as easy as he had hoped, even with the change in venue, and Colman has returned to the lab. He says investors were reluctant to keep funding research at a company where the prospects of producing commercial products — and profits —were uncertain.

Colman now works for the government as executive director of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, which co-

ordinates research and supports projects such as the development of a stem cell bank. He'll also be working as a principal investigator at the Institute of Medical Biology, where he'll study various types of stem cells — not just those from human embryos.

The difficulty of translating lab research into commercial applications is what Lim, the head of Singapore's bioethics committee, says keeps him up at night. Singapore needs its bets on biomedical science to pay off in order to ensure future prosperity, he says.

Lane says Singapore's prospects are good. "You want to see outcomes that you can measure, and measuring outcomes from research requires a reasonably long time,'' he says. "Will the government have the patience? Everything indicates it will."