Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore’s research-intensive, graduate-entry medical school, has joined a consortium of academic institutions that collaborate with industry partners to scale academic discoveries and bring new treatments, diagnostics and other products to patients in Singapore and beyond.

The consortium is organised by BioStrategy Partners Inc. (BioSP), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Pennsylvania, USA, that has more than a decade of experience in building industry-academic collaborations. Other consortium members include the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, Thomas Jefferson University, The Wistar Institute and University of the Sciences. Duke-NUS is the consortium’s first non-US-based member.

As a member of the consortium, Duke-NUS will participate in BioSP’s Germinator programme, which partners with pharmaceutical and medical device companies to identify and de-risk promising academic projects through a coordinated process, including organised sessions with industry-based scientific and commercial experts. The result is a joint development plan, funding, as well as mentoring and other forms of engagement with industry-based scientists.

"Finding mechanisms to create long-term, substantive relationships with industry is a key strategy for Duke-NUS’s innovation and entrepreneurship programme," said Associate Professor Christopher Laing, Senior Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke-NUS. "Universities are great at discovery – but we need industry partners to scale our impact. Organisations like BioSP help us to amplify our collaborative reach."

BioSP has run Germinator programmes for more than a decade, with a number of global biopharma industry partners. The first BioSP Germinator programme in which Duke-NUS will participate will include Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc., an international in vitro diagnostic company. The goal of this innovative programme will be to accelerate the development of biomarkers for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

"BioStrategy Partners is excited to welcome into the consortium Duke-NUS, which has established a solid reputation for world-class research. Our members, industry partners and, ultimately, patients stand to benefit from the multinational perspective," said Erika Swift, President of BioSP, and Director of the Center for Medical Innovation at Penn State University College of Medicine.

In addition to participating in the Germinator programme, BioSP consortium members, which collectively perform more than US$1 billion of biomedical research and development annually, also share best practices and expertise for commercialisation, and provide shared educational resources to scientists across their institutions.