The organizers of the AACR meeting in Singapore on “Translational Cancer Medicine – Technologies to Treatment” scheduled for 4-8 November 2007, have offered a group registration rate of US$250 (approx. S$380) per person if there is a minimum group of at least 30 people from NUS. If you are interested to attend this meeting, please forward your name, designation, department/programme, email & telephone contacts to:

Ms Selena Gan
Manager, ORI/Cancer Programme
Email – nmiv29@nus.edu.sg

8th Sino-Singapore Conference in Biology 2007

The 8th Sino-Singapore conference in biology 2007 is co-organized by Tsinghua University, Xiamen University and NUS. The participants will include other leading Chinese universities such as Peking University, Fudan University, Wuhan University and Nankai University among others.

Date: 19 to 21 Nov 2007
Time: 9am to 6pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

Editorial Team

Lim Chwee Teck
Ellice Lim
Siti Haryanti
Aziz Salim

Structural Biology & Proteomics Research Group Scientific Retreat

Date: 1 September 2007
Time: 9am
Venue: DBS Conference Room

For more info, please click here

Six grant calls were recently announced:

3^rd Grant call – JOINT SBIC-SSCC AND 3^rd SBIC GRANT CALLS
Submission to OLS : 10 September 2007
More information on the grant call can be obtained from http://www.a-star.edu.sg/astar/biomed/action/
biomed_funding_current_calls.do

EDB Biomedical Sciences Group: Call for Medical Technology POC Proposals, 2007
Submission to OLS : 14 September 2007
More information can be obtained from www.medtechconcept.com.sg

1^st Grant call – WCRF International – Grant Application Announcement
Submission to OLS : 21 September 2007
Please visit www.wcrf.org for more information.

1^st Grant call on Bio-Asia Regional Program on Natural Substances
Submission to OLS : 8 October 2007
Please visit www.bio-asia-france.org for more information.

Launch of NMRC Clinician Scientist Award 2007
NMRC held a roadshow on 29 Aug 2007 from 5.30 to 6.30pm at the CRC Auditorium, NUS. This roadshow is to announce the new Clinician Scientist Award (CSA) Scheme. More information will follow.

NRF Scenario-based Competitive Research Programme (CRP) Grant Call Briefing
NRF will be launching a scenario-inspired problem-based variation of the CRP grant call some time in September to complement the general open CRP grant calls. A briefing Session was held on 29 Aug 2007 from 2 to 3pm at the University Hall Auditorium, NUS. Please click here for more information (You will need to connect to NUS VPN if you are not in NUS).

World Cancer Research Fund International Grant Application Outline Proposal 2007/2008

World Cancer Research Fund International is now inviting applications for grants to fund research into the effects of food, nutrition and physical activity on the origins, causes and prevention of cancer. Grants will be for a maximum of £150,000 up to four years, with no more than £50,000 in any one year.

The declaration must be signed by both the Head of the Department and the Department’s Finance Officer for the application to be accepted by WCR. Once PI has completed the application, please return it to OLS for collation before they are sent to WCRF. Thus, please submit a soft copy of the completed application form to Ms Koh Ser Hwee at olsksh@nus.edu.sg and a signed hard copy to OLS by 5pm, 28 Sep 2007, Friday. [READ MORE] | [Grant Application Outline Proposal] | [Copy of budget_sheet]

Arising from the successful bilateral workshop on developmental and cell biology between NUS and the Weizmann Institute (WI), Israel in early August 2007, there is now a strong interest from WI to participate in research collaboration here in Singapore under the frame work of CREATE. One of the possible research programmes being considered by WI and Singapore is Synthetic Biology which deals with the design and manipulation of model organisms and some of the platform technologies for large scale mutagenesis and screening, among others.

Several senior PIs from WI are coming to Singapore from 16 to 18 October 2007. Any staff or PI who may be interested to collaborate under this proposed programme can provide a title and a short description of your research interest or topic, and send them to Ellice Lim (olslime@nus.edu.sg) of OLS by 20 September 2007. Please also contact Ellice for further information.

OLS will organize an internal workshop based on the responses received some time in Oct 2007 so that a fruitful discussion can be made with the WI team. Our intention is to make a joint presentation to NRF later.

2nd Singapore Lipid Symposium 2008

Date: 5 – 7 March 2008
Time: 9am
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

For more info, please click here

NUS-Baden Wurttemberg Joint Scientific Conference 2007

Date: 29 – 30 October 2007
Time: 9am
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

Mechanobiology Workshop 2007

Date: 16 – 18 October 2007
Time: 9am
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

OLS/NUS-Tohoku COE Joint Symposium 2007

Date: Wednesday, 5 September 2007
Time: 9am to 6pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

For more info, please click here

The 1^st Weizmann Institute of Science-Singapore Joint Workshop 2007 was held in Rehovot, Israel from 6-9 August 2007. It was attended by a delegation of scientists from NUS, Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), as well as many colleagues from the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Singapore group was led by Prof Hew Choy Leong, Director OLS. It comprised ten Principal Investigators, one post-doc and one graduate student. [READ MORE]

The RUNX International Conference for 2007 was held in Singapore, at the Biopolis, from 20 – 23 August 2007. This annual meeting is the 14^th of its kind and this year, 50 international and local speakers presented their latest work. The conference attracted close to 150 participants. This year, the conference was organised by the Oncology Research Institute/Cancer Programme led by Dr Yoshiaki Ito, who is also one of the founders of the RUNX family of genes. The original founding members, together with a group of scientists that have grown rapidly over the years, have held annual meetings in the US, Japan, UK and Korea, and for the first time here in Singapore in 2007. [READ MORE]

Biomedical researchers can now look forward to accessing state-of-the-art imaging tools with the establishment of the Clinical Imaging Research Centre (CIRC) in NUS. This is a joint collaboration between NUS, A*STAR and Siemens Medical Solutions. [READ MORE]

Mr Saravanan Gunaratnam, Head, Occupational Safety & Health Management Division Office of Safety, Health and Environment, also gave an overview of the Occupational Health & Safety Management System.

Dr Viji Vijayan, Scientific Manager, OLS, also shared with the audience on the OLS sharepoint where safety related and relevant documents will be made available for all CeLS occupants. Access can only be granted to NUS staff and students with NUS email accounts and those who work in CeLS. Please contact Aziz at azizs@nus.edu.sg for access to the sharepoint. Please click on the URL https://share.nus.edu.sg/ols/cels_matters/default.aspx to access the sharepoint.

If there are relevant documents which you wish to post on the sharepoint, you may send them to Viji Vijayan who will review the document and upload it.

Dr Viji Vijayan (standing at left) responding to a question by
an audience while Mr Saravanan Gunaratnam (standing at
right) looks on.

In addition to the OLS sharepoint, a discussion board has been created. It could be used to discuss work-related issues, to exchange ideas and experiences, provide feedback and even share reagents, especially those with short shelf lives. We hope to see a high level of activity at this sharepoint.

OLS will continue to provide you more such facilities in the future.

OLS Young Investigator Seminar Series Cum Networking Session

The OLS Young Investigator Seminar was held on 22 August 2007 at the CeLS Auditorium. The two speakers were A/P Low Boon Chuan from Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Dr Daniel Ng from the Department of Community, Occupational & Family Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. The seminar was followed by a Networking Session.

A/P Low Boon Chuan

Dr Daniel Ng

OLS Distinguished Lecture Series

An OLS Distinguished Lecture was held on 14 August 2007 at the CeLS Auditorium. The speaker was Prof Ehud Razin, from the Department of Biochemistry, Hebrew University Medical School, Israel. He delivered a lecture titled “Ap4A as a Second Messenger in a Novel Gene Regulation Pathway in Immunologically Activated Mast Cell”.

Prof Ehud Razin delivering his lecture.

Chairman for the session, Prof Mike
Kemeny, with his question.

Seminar by Ageing/Neurobiology Programme

“Drosophila Neuroblasts as a Novel Model for Studying Stem Cell/Cancer Biology”

Dr Wang Hongyan
Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory

Date: Wednesday, 5 September 2007
Time: 12pm to 1pm
Venue: CeLS Seminar Room 1

__________

“Cdk5 – A Double Edged Sword”

Dr Sashi Kesavapany
Biochemistry, NUS

“Lipidomics in Pathway Discovery and Biomarker Development”

Dr Markus Wenk
Biochemistry, NUS

Date: Monday, 10 September 2007
Time: 12pm to 1pm
Venue: CeLS Seminar Room 1

__________

“Neural Plasticity in an Unconventional Animal System, The Songbird”

Professor Timothy Devoogd
Psychology, NUS
Psychology, Columbia University, US

Date: Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Time: 12pm to 1pm
Venue: CeLS Seminar Room 1

Young Investigator Seminar Series Cum Networking Session

“Mycobacteria: finding the Achilles’ heel”

Dr Seah Geok Teng
Assistant Professor
Department of Microbiology
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

“Novel Tyrosine Kinase Substrates in Oncogenic Signaling and Cancer Development”

Dr Lim Yoon Pin
Senior Research Scientist
OLS Cancer Programme
National University Medical Institute

Date: Thursday, 20 September 2007
Time: 4 -5 pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium

This seminar will be followed by a networking session in the CeLS foyer. All are welcome!

OLS Distinguished Lecture Series

“Uncovering The Molecular Mechanisms That Regulate TNF-induced Cell Death”

Dr Zheng-Gang Liu
Senior Investigator
Cell and Cancer Biology Branch
Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute
National Institutes of Health, USA

Date: Tuesday, 11 September 2007
Time: 4 pm
Venue: CeLS Auditorium