Mr Lee Yi Shyan at the Biospectrum Asia Pacific Life Sciences Industry Awards 2010, 12 Mar 2010

Speech by Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Manpower at the Bio spectrum Asia Pacific Life Sciences Industry Awards 2010 on 12 March 2010 at 8:15pm at The Legends, Fort Canning Park

Mr Shyam Malhotra, Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, Cyber Media,

Mr Philip Yeo, Chairman, SPRING Singapore,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good evening. I am pleased to join you today at Bio Spectrum's Asia Life Sciences Industry Awards ceremony.

Singapore – a leading Biomedical Sciences Cluster in Asia

Asia’s healthcare markets are expanding. According to Frost & Sullivan, the markets are projected to grow from US$246 billion in 2009 to US$349 billion in 2012. With such vast market opportunities, it is little wonder that many Asian countries are developing biomedical manufacturing and R&D activities. In Singapore’s case, our plans for the development of a biomedical cluster began 10 years ago. Since then over S$5 billion have been invested.

With excellent connectivity to key Asian markets, a stable and skilled workforce and our well-developed and robust Intellectual Property (IP) regime, Singapore has attracted leading global companies from the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences industries to establish operations here. Today, Singapore manufactures more than S$20 billion worth of medicines and medical devices for regional and global markets each year.

The biomedical sciences industry is now an important sector of Singapore’s economy. It contributes 4.1% of the nation's GDP and employs more than 16,000 individuals. Last year, despite the difficult economic conditions, the sector continued to grow, attracted new projects that resulted in 1,200 new jobs. Our goal is to attain S$25 billion in manufacturing output by 2015.

Plans for the future

Our plan for the future is an ambitious one. First of all, we will continue to enhance the environment for R&D activities. Today, our annual expenditure in biomedical sciences exceeds S$1 billion. Equally important, is our commitment towards further developing our infrastructure and manpower capabilities to support the industry. Finding our advanced R&D capabilities useful include Invitrogen and FORMA, which set up their Asian R&D bases in Singapore last year. Others such as European biotech's Humalys and Cytos have also forged collaborations with our research institutes like A*STAR’s Singapore Immunology Network to develop antibody-based therapies for infectious diseases that are prevalent in Asia.

Next, we encourage companies to undertake Innovation activities. As companies seek to discover, design and develop the next breakthrough drug or medical device, they need to find ways to integrate a myriad disciplines and translate discoveries into viable therapies and devices with effective clinical outcomes.

In support of companies’ innovation needs, Singapore has put in place a pro-innovation infrastructure with a ready pool of clinician-scientists and innovators to help accelerate the process. We established an integrated research network nationwide that enables companies to access our multidisciplinary capabilities across scientific and medical institutes. In the last two years, Singapore has also launched the Singapore Translational Research (Star) Investigator Award and Clinician Scientist Award to grow our pool of clinician-scientists.

In January this year, EDB and A*STAR jointly launched the Singapore-Stanford Bio design Programme with Stanford University. It is to train medical device innovators in the multi-disciplinary bio design process and in Asian clinical needs. Our efforts have not gone unnoticed. Two months ago, the world’s leading biotechnology company, Roche, announced the setting up of a Hub for Translational Medicine in Singapore. It will partner Singapore’s scientific and medical institutes to increase knowledge in disease biology and develop personalized treatments.

Finally, we encourage Bio-medical companies to take on regional functions here. There are now over 100 bio-medical sciences companies based in Singapore. Of the 100 companies, 30 of them have set up regional and international headquarters functions. For example, last year, leading Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda and global medical device leader, Medtronic, opened their regional and international headquarters in Singapore.

Conclusion

This evening’s awards ceremony recognizes the outstanding contributions of some of the individuals and companies towards the development of the biotechnology and life sciences industry. In particular, it honors individuals and companies who have displayed outstanding qualities in Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the biomedical sciences industry.

I would like to offer my heartiest congratulations to all our award winners. I wish you greater success in time to come.

Thank you.