(Illustration by Joelle Bolt)
Beefing Up Biotech With Biopolis
When Singapore unveiled a 46-acre bioscience complex in 2003, it met with a few raised eyebrows. How can an autocratic city-state that meddles in everything from bungee-jumping to gum-chewing stimulate free-wheeling innovation? But with research at Biopolis, as the complex is called, now hurtling ahead, the naysayers are being proven wrong. The seven buildings in the $500 million (U.S.$328 million) development—which sport names like Genome, Matrix and Nanos—now house 2,000 scientists from around the world, along with a collection of new state research agencies. The two buildings in Phase II, completed in 2006, are fully booked. "The take-up has exceeded our timeline," says Keat Chuan Yeoh, executive director for biomedical sciences at Singapore’s Economic Development Board, which spearheaded the project along with the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR). "We brought [the timeline] forward at least a year because of stronger than anticipated demand." While many spots in the world show biotechnology slowdowns because of the global economic crash, Biopolis keeps moving forward.
In 2000 Singaporean leaders debated how best to diversify the small state’s economy, which at the time depended on manufacturing. "We wanted to move up the chain to knowledge creation and inventions," explains Andre Wan, deputy executive director of A*STAR’s Biomedical Research Council. Bioscience made sense: "We already had a pharmaceutical manufacturing presence and a good healthcare system."
Biopolis is part of a larger area intended to showcase the country’s new strength. The neighborhood also holds the National University of Singapore, an outpost of Duke Graduate Medical School and the early research hub Singapore Science Park II—along with Fusionopolis, a new complex devoted to technology and information science.
That concentration of resources—along with $1.5 billion (U.S.$1 billion) in funding for translational research— has helped Singapore recruit major pharmaceutical companies and big-name Western scientists. In 2003, for example, Alex Matter stepped down as Novartis’s head of oncology research in Basel, Switzerland, where he led development of the cancer drug Gleevec, to take over the company’s Institute for Tropical Diseases in Biopolis. Today, Matter says he doesn’t have any regrets: "It’s all fresh and new here, but there is a huge amount of energy and drive."
Another big recruit is Jackie Ying, a young hotshot from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who now heads A*STAR’S Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. Ying says she’s had the freedom to structure problem-oriented projects, hire scientists from a variety of disciplines and even tweak the focus of the institute—A*STAR leaders originally envisioned it as the Institute of Bioengineering, without the nanotech. The government "gave me a lot of flexibility and resources so we could do cutting-edge research in Singapore," she says.
Ultimately, Singapore’s government hopes Biopolis will spark interaction between research institutes and the private sector, leading to a proliferation of small spin-off companies. But now that scientists have moved in, the state doesn’t meddle in their work, Matter says: "The government doesn’t tell researchers what to research. It’s a very enlightened form of top-down administration." The government is, perhaps, too busy forging ahead with its bioscience vision. "We’re looking at Phases IV and V," Yeoh says.
