Science: Singapore Firm Abandons Plans for Stem Cell Therapies

From today’s Science news (DOI: 10.1126/science.317.5836.305):

Singapore Firm Abandons Plans for Stem Cell Therapies

In a sign that hopes for quick medical benefits from stem cells are fading, ES Cell International (ESI)–a company established with fanfare in Singapore 7 years ago–is halting work on human embryonic stem (hES) cell therapies. Investors lost interest because “the likelihood of having products in the clinic in the short term was vanishingly small,” says Alan Colman, a stem cell pioneer who until last month was ESI’s chief executive.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, since Colman and other researchers will continue stem cell work under A*STAR’s Singapore Stem Cell Consortium.

The reason for stopping their work was primarily cost and time:

The company was attempting to turn hES cells into insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes and cardiac muscle cells to counter congestive heart failure. Both conditions represent major markets with unmet clinical needs, but making well-functioning insulin-producing cells “proved really difficult,” Colman says. Both envisioned therapies would need at least a billion cells for each human dose. Producing such numbers at the required purity “becomes very expensive,” Colman says, and meeting these challenges would have taken longer than investors have patience for.

One of the most heated debates among A*STAR administration and researchers has been that of the roles of basic research and applied research.  Having a knowledge based economy means an aggressive push towards commercialisation, naturally.  But, as this case shows, viable commercialisation can only occur when you have a solid foundation to build upon.  Hence the moral of the story:

But he [Alan Trounson, a Monash University stem cell scientist] says that ESI pursued “a high-risk strategy” in focusing narrowly on two potential applications. With the field still young, Trounson says, “the primary aim should be to establish a broad platform of robust and reliable science that can under pin translation to clinical applications.”

It’s a tough balancing act.  Move too slowly, and you’re going to lose your market share to other companies.  Move too quickly, and you’re still going to lose your market share when your entire house of cards comes tumbling down.

“Being a non-Christian and a member of the Teochew community…”

So there’s this article in Today with an opening paragraph on how some students weren’t aware of the link between Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Ngee Ann City (shopping centre). No, this will not be a rant on youths and history and apathy, rather, I thought it’ll be interesting to find out more about the merchant organisation known as Ngee Ann Kongsi instead.

They’re based in the Teochew Building at Tank Road, and there’s a small museum (the heritage centre) dedicated to the history of the corporation, complete with historical exhibits like merchant ledgers and school report cards. It’s quite a fascinating place to visit, for tourists and locals alike.

A small bit of trivia: There’s even the Ngee Ann Kongsi (Incorporation) Ordinance, which is published on the Singapore Statutes Online (direct link). An excerpt:

6. The objects and general purposes of the Corporation shall be —

(a) the promotion, propagation and observance of the doctrines, ceremonies, rites and customs of the religion or religions (other than the Christian religion) commonly professed or maintained in Singapore by members of the Teochew Community of the said Eight Districts;

There must be an interesting historical tale behind this exclusion of Christianity!

We will rock you!

Physicists aren’t cool? Think again. Rock on!

TCM under the microscope

Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) is the theme of an interesting article and editorial in today’s issue of Nature. In particular, the focus is on the divide of opinions in this age-old treatment - not just between Western and Eastern medical practitioners, but within the field of TM itself.
I think it’s safe to say that many Chinese in Singapore have been the recipients of TCM at some point in their lives; whether it’s seeing a practitioner and getting a full-blown course of medication, or simply downing a cup of herbal luo han guo tea for a sore-throat. And yet, TCM is a ripe ground for pseudoscience - with no real quantitative way of diagnosing a patient or prescribing medication, it is easy for hucksters to wave their hands, mutter incantations about qi and sell what is essentially snake oil, some of which can be potentially fatal. Witness the number of cases where imported medications have been banned for containing excessive amounts of arsenic or mercury. As a result, there is quite a bit of skepticism about TCM, which raises a barrier for rigorous scientific studies in this area.

Even so, there are other inherent difficulties in testing the effectiveness of TCM remedies. In Western medicine, new remedies are tested using a reductionist approach - isolate the active ingredient, and run proper, controlled trials. However, in TCM, it is not uncommon to prescribe a combination of herbs. Your parameter space goes up drastically - not only do you have to find out what’s chemically important in each herb, but also how they interact with the patient’s system as a whole. Testing now involves studying a number of different pathways - not an easy task! Another additional difficulty is the variability of the ingredients. Depending on the season where the herb was harvested and the region where it was grown, its chemical composition can be significantly different. Such variation will have to be controlled to put TCM on a firm rigorous footing with Western medicine, argues one researcher.

Within TCM itself, advocates are divided into two camps: one group believes that the theory (those about qi, yin, yang, etc) should be separated from the practice (diagnosis and treatment); the other believes otherwise.

“Traditional Chinese medicine is not just a medical system, but a branch of philosophy and healing art that is an important part of Chinese culture,” says Fu Jing-hua, a retired researcher at the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medicine Sciences in Beijing and president of the Chinese Ancient Books Publishing House in Beijing. “Devoid of that cultural context, it would become a tree without roots.”

Which sounds like cultural conservatism to me. Whatever the case, there are still many challenges that TCM needs to overcome before it can be accepted as a mainstream form of medical treatment, particularly in the West.

Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?

That’s the title of a paper published in today’s issue of Science.

Basically, the researchers stuck little recorders to 396 university students (probably the most talkative species on earth) in US and Mexico and went around sampling their conversations for several days.

The conclusion? No significant difference. Males talked just as much as females, at least in this group studied.

Which begs three further questions:

1) Would this result also hold true in Asia?

2) What about the written words? Are blog postings from females typically longer than males?

3) Are there gender differences in the amount of useful information exchanged during conversations? (”Me Tarzan. You Jane!” :P)

Going to do a nanoscience course? Choose wisely.

At the ongoing local MRS conference, John Baglin from IBM gave an interesting talk on the trend of universities offering programs in nanoscience and nanotechnology (now, being the eminent guy that he is, he can get away with using Wikipedia as a source). He makes the following pertinent point:

“Basics are the highest priority”

When employers are looking to hire someone, he says, they are looking for someone with the basics - that is, someone whose foundation in the sciences is strong enough to weather any shortlived fad and hype in the nanotechnology industry. This is apparently a sentiment shared by some graduates as well.

It’s definitely sound advice. Look at the job sections of the newspapers - are companies looking for applications with a “Degree in nanoscience/nanotechnology or related field”? That’s not happening (yet) - employers are still looking for applications with the usual physics/chemistry/engineering degrees. Baglin brings up a comparison with the MSE (materials science and engineering) courses that became popular a few decades ago - back then, it was viewed as another of those buzzword-compliant degrees, but now MSE has become solidly established. Whether nanoscience/nanotechnology degrees follow the same trend still remains to be seen.

Another piece of advice we normally give to students looking for a suitable university program - it can take 10 years or more to complete the whole university education path and emerge as a fledgling researcher. 10 years is an extremely long time in science, given the pace at which research is moving today. Just because something is hot and sexy now doesn’t mean it’ll continue to be so in 10 years. By the time you’re hearing about some new trend in the news, it’s at the peak already and can only go downhill from there. Which means that by the time you’re ready to do research in that field, most of the fun stuff will have been done already.