Editorial Team

Lim Chwee Teck
Ellice Lim
Siti Haryanti
Aziz Salim

To celebrate the year end festivities, OLS is organizing a year end party on Friday, 14 December 2007 at the CeLS foyer from 11.30 am to 2.30 pm. The OLS Executive Committee would like to extend an invitation to all Programmes to come together for this event. This is an excellent opportunity for all to get together!

Cardiovascular Research Retreat

OLS was invited to participate in the Cardiovascular Research Retreat on Saturday, 17 November at the Clinical Research Centre Auditorium.

The retreat was jointly organised by NUS, The Heart Institute and NUH.The purpose of the retreat was to bring together various groups of researchers and discover potential collaborative efforts in research which might not be immediately obvious with a view of forming a Cardiovascular Translational Research Institute.

The retreat was attended by 55 researchers from NUS, NUH, NHG. A total of 22 presentations were made at the retreat.

Faculty members and NUH clinicians presented their current research and clinical field of interest. This should lead to discussions on potential projects. A survey is being sent to all Medical Faculty staff to assess the resources needed for further research collaboration.

The following grant calls were recently announced:

EDB Biomedical Sciences Group: Call for Medical Technology POC Proposals, 2008
Submission to OLS – – 8 January 2008.
More information can be obtained from http://www.medtechconcept.com.sg/

NMRC: NMRC 07 Nov IRG/ EDG/ NIG Exercise
Submission to OLS – 7 December 2007.
For more info please go to https://rita.nrf.gov.sg/BiomedicalScience/
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Brain Function and Repair Symposia 2008

OLS Neurobiology/Ageing Programme will be organizing the 2nd Symposium on Brain and Mind Research in the Asia/Pacific (BMAP) at the Biopolis, from 1 to 3 September 2008. A joint scientific session will be held with another symposia, the 6th Asia Pacific Symposium on Neuroregeneration (APSNR), co-organized by A*Star and NUS from the 3 to 6 September 2008. [READ MORE]

1^st International Singapore Symposium of Immunology 2008

The 1^st International Singapore Symposium of Immunology 2008 will be held from the 14 to 16 January 2008 at Biopolis (Breakthrough Theatrette at Level 4, Matrix Building). The event will incorporate the inauguration of the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) laboratories at Immunos and the launch of the Singaporean Society for immunology (SSI). [READ MORE]

OLS Distinguished Lecture Series

Prof Sheila A. Bingham.

An OLS Distinguished Lecture was held on 26 November 2007 at the CeLS Auditorium. The speaker was Prof Sheila A. Bingham, from MRC Centre for Nutrition and Cancer Prevention and Survival, University of Cambridge, UK. She delivered a lecture titled “Biomarkers in Nutritional Epidemiology”.

Prof Bingham receiving a memento
from Prof Ong Choon Nam.

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Prof Stuart B. Goodman delivering his lecture.

OLS is also honoured to have Prof Stuart B. Goodman who delivered the OLS Distinguished Lecture on 29 November 2007 at the CeLS Auditorium. Prof Stuart B. Goodman is from Stanford University, USA. His lecture was on “Polymer Particles Inhibit Osteoblastic Differentiation of Bone Marrow Osteoprogenitor Cells in Vitro”.

The Bioinformatics Programme will be co-hosting a week of symposia on bioinformatics and computational biology (AASBI2007, GIW2007, and LBM2007) from 2 to 7 December 2007 at the Biopolis. [READ MORE]

The 3^rd Tohoku-NUS Joint Symposium 2007 on Nano-Biomedical Engineering in the East Asian-Pacific Rim Region will be held from 10-11 December 2007 at CeLS NUS. For more information, please click here.

The Structural Biology and Proteomics Reasearch (SBPR) Programme 2007 and the Infectious Disease Programme (IDP) 2007 jointly organised a symposium on Saturday, 17 November 2007 at the Department of Biological Sciences Conference Room. Despite the day being a Saturday, the symposium was attended by 35 participants involving staff, students and postdocs from both programmes. [READ MORE]

Our simple measures to conserve energy has been very successful as can be seen from the lower electricity bills for the past three months. We thank you for your efforts in our drive to conserve energy.

The CeLS Safety SOPs were put in place on 17 August . Since then, OLS has taken repeated measures to communicate these SOPs to all working in CeLS. We have started conducting monthly inspections to ensure that the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) have been been adopted and observed.

We are also preparing to apply for NUS Annual Safety & Health Performance Award (ASHPA) Scheme and the NUS Safety & Health Improvement Projects (SHIP) Scheme in December. We invite all those working in CeLS to share their ideas for developing new SHIP for next year.

We have also had a Petroleum Flammable Materials audit by an external party and are awaiting the results of the audit.

Our congratulations to Assoc Prof Markus R Wenk (PI), Department of Biochemistry & Department of Biological Sciences, & OLS Neurobiology/Ageing Programme, for being among the first group of researchers to be awarded a grant under the National Research Foundation’s Competitive Research Programme (CRP) Funding Scheme.

The CRP Funding Scheme, which was approved at the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC) meeting chaired by the Prime Minister on 16 March 2007, offers funding support of up to S$10 million per programme, over three to five years. The aim of the CRP Funding Scheme is to help identify potential strategic research areas in which Singapore can invest to develop new industries for the future, by funding a broad base of research ideas at the programme level and facilitating a more integrated and sustained way of supporting high-impact interdisciplinary research. [READ MORE]

Professor Chang Young-Tae, OLS Medicinal Chemistry Programme Leader

After one and half years of army service in Korea, he started his graduate study at POSTECH and received a Ph.D. in 1997 under the supervision of Prof. Sung-Kee Chung, working on the divergent synthesis of all possible regioisomers of myo-inositol phosphates. [READ MORE]

OLS is pleased to highlight some of the new Programme Leaders who have been appointed to head the OLS Programmes. In this issue we are pleased to feature Prof Ong Choon Nam (Toxicology Programme) and Assoc Prof Chang Young-Tae (Medicinal Chemistry Programme).

Professor Ong Choon Nam, OLS Toxicology Programme Leader

He teaches the Master of Public Health Module and Life Sciences Module. He is now concurrently the Deputy Director of the Office of Life Sciences. [READ MORE]

Seminar by Cancer Programme

“The Sodium Pump and Its Alpha1 and Alpha3 Subunits as Novel Targets to Combat Apoptosis- and/or Multidrug-Resistant Proliferating and Migrating Cancer Cells”

Prof Robert Kiss
Director of Research
Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research
Laboratory of Toxicology, Institute of Pharmacy,
Free University of Brussels, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Date:    Tuesday, 4 December 2007
Time:   12.00 pm – 1.00 pm
Venue: Seminar Room 1, CeLS

Prof Marye Anne Fox, Chancellor of the University of California at San Diego visited CeLs on 6 November 2007. She was given a briefing of OLS followed by tour of the Immunology Labs by Dr Justin Wong.

Dr Justin Wong with Prof Marye
Anne Fox.

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The NRF CRP International Evaluation Panel (IEP) Members visited CeLS on 13 November 2007. They were taken on a tour of Neurobiology Labs by  Assoc Prof Markus Wenk.

Prof Wenk briefing IEP members.

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A 4 member Biowin Delegation from Belgium called on CeLS on 1 Nov 2007 to explore possible areas of collaboration with programmes under OLS.

Biowin Delegation on tour of
Immunology labs.

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A delegation from the National Science Council, Taiwan visited OLS on 26 Nov 2007. They were briefed on OLS operations followed by a tour of the Neurobiology Labs.