$20m centre at NUH to start clinical trials

A $20 MILLION centre to test new drugs, medical procedures and devices on people opens today at the National University Hospital (NUH).

The focus of this centre, the Investigational Medicine Unit, will be on the early phases of human testing, shoring up Singapore's ambition to become a clinical trials centre for the region.

Data from early-phase clinical trials helps drug companies make critical business decisions on whether to go ahead with developing a drug - a process which generally costs $1 billion by the time it reaches pharmacy shelves.

The new unit is the second public centre here to focus on early-phase clinical trials. The first, under the SingHealth cluster of hospitals and polyclinics, opened last month.

In Buona Vista, the Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI) focuses on later phases of clinical trials.

These three public institutions form a critical part of Singapore's biomedical sciences push to get novel treatments developed in the laboratories out to patients.

There is growing data that shows Asians and Caucasians develop different diseases and respond to drugs differently. With Asia's growing population and affluence, major drug companies now have their eye on Asia.

Drug companies say Singapore is a favoured choice because of the strict adherence to regulations, safety, ethics and intellectual property protection, and several have their own private clinical trials facilities here.

While the Republic does not have the numbers required for late-phase trials, the SCRI serves as a link to other hospitals in the region.

The new unit at NUH currently has a database of 600 volunteers, whose varied racial make-up mirrors that of Singapore's population, said the unit's deputy director, Dr Gerard Wong.

'So drug companies who want to test how their drugs work in different ethnic groups which are representative of the different Asian populations in the region can come to us,' he said.

The $20 million is being pumped in over five years by the Ministry of Health's National Medical Research Council and the National University Health System. The funds will cover manpower and equipment cost, said the director of the new unit, Associate Professor Goh Boon Cher.

He hopes to grow the database to 1,000 people. The unit is currently running about 40 to 50 clinical studies, mainly drug trials by major drug companies.

Said Dr Goh: 'In the past, various research groups were working in isolation and were therefore ineffective in the use of their limited resources.

'Now, we can share and better manage resources and increase the speed and efficiency of clinical research.'

By 2011, the unit will move across the road to a new building under the medical school.

Besides testing new drugs, it will consolidate research at the National University of Singapore and NUH in areas such as infectious diseases, cancer, metabolic diseases and eye diseases.

It will also look at how diet affects organ function and how different races develop diseases and respond to medicines.