25 years after investing big in biomedical sector, Singapore has tasted some success but the big league remains elusive
One of the few oral treatments available in the world for bone marrow cancer is a drug called Vonjo, which was created by Singaporean biotechnology company S*Bio – but few people likely know this.
The drug, which received approval from the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2022, is among the few commercial successes out of Singapore’s biomedical industry, which, despite a quarter century of nurturing, has yet to achieve global hub status.
When Singapore first began planting the seeds for its biomedical industry in 2000, the hope was that this new sector would eventually grow into the fourth pillar of the economy.
Fast forward to today and this ambition has yet to be fulfilled. Few innovations from biomedical and biotech companies based here have been commercialised, failing to translate science into feasible businesses that would contribute to the economy.
The ones that have made it to market, such as Vonjo, are not very well-known, which adds to the problem.
At the same time, the employment prospects for biomedical science students still seem less bright than those of their peers from other courses.
Numbers from the 2024 Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey, which was published on Feb 24, showed that graduates from the sciences course cluster earned a median monthly average salary of S$4,125 within six months of completing their final exams, lower than the S$4,500 average pay across all courses.
The survey also showed that these science graduates have a full-time permanent employment rate of 72.3 per cent within six months of their final exams, below the average 79.5 per cent.
As Professor Chng Wee Joo said, Singapore’s biomedical sector has a “size and branding” issue.
The vice-president of biomedical sciences research at the National University of Singapore (NUS) added: “We need to have greater visibility on the capabilities of our system and sell our value proposition of a very integrated system with strong foundational infrastructure to attract more people to come and work with us in clinical trials and translation.”
Indeed, several experts who spoke to CNA TODAY said that Singapore has put in place a world-class infrastructure for the biomedical industry and has a lot to be proud of – but it needs investors and collaborators from the rest of the world to take notice if it wants to take the sector to the next level.
Mr Paul Scibetta, who leads Singapore-based health tech investment firm 22Health Ventures, said in his 30 years doing business here, it is “obvious” that it has “great technology, great talent, policy and funding infrastructure” that makes the country “the best place in Asia to specialise in healthcare startups”.
However, Singapore’s biomedical startups are inexperienced in business development and need mentoring on this front, he said.
Singapore lacks globally sophisticated venture capital businesses that are based here that can mentor these startups and drive research from the very early stages to gear it towards market demands, he said, which has led to the scarcity of commercial successes.
Still, the experts said it is far from a lost cause and 25 years is a very short time in biomedical science.
Prof Chng from NUS pointed out, for example, that translating research into drugs takes on average eight to 10 years.
“We are the new kids on the block and need time to build our visibility and reputation. Compared to Boston and Palo Alto, our history is a lot shorter. In parallel, we need to grow the talent pool. This is being actively addressed but it takes time.”
Dr Ang Hwee Ching, deputy chief executive officer of Singapore’s Experimental Drug Development Centre (EDDC), echoed this sentiment, saying that discovery and development is “really an effort that takes a village, takes an ecosystem, takes time, and we need to, over time, build up that expertise”.