Winners of the first Asia-proper Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS Singapore Quickfire Challenge a

The top three winners of the first inaugural Singapore Quickfire Challenge – Metabolic Disease Innovation, which was conducted by Johnson & Johnson, JLABS in partnership with A*STAR’s commercialisation arm Exploit Technologies (ETPL), the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and SPRING Singapore, were officially announced at the Ecosystem Day in Marina Bay Sands on 18 September 2017.

The challenge winners were (in no particular order): Nanyang Technological University (LambdaGen) for their work in personalised therapeutics, PreventAGE Healthcare for their personalised diabetic complications risk assessment, and Medopad for their patient monitoring software. All winners received SGD 100,000 worth of funds for research in Singapore, access to ETPL laboratory space, and one year of mentoring by ETPL, Johnson & Johnson and SMART.

Given that this was the first time the challenge was held in Asia, this year’s theme was mainly conceptualised in a bid to encourage and support innovation geared towards the tackling of metabolic disease, as it ‘poses a threat to the Asia Pacific region like never before,’ according to Melinda Richter, Global Head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS.

‘Metabolic disease is the focus here due to its alarming rate of growth. By 2030, diabetes will affect the lives of over 500 million people in China and India alone,’ said Richter.

The other palpable theme of the day was that of ecosystem building paving the way for the fostering of innovation. ‘The true test for an ecosystem comes from helping and supporting companies to grow and enter the market successfully – and this must be done in a systematic way,’ said Philip Lim, CEO of ETPL.

He added, ‘A healthy amount of funds have been invested into budgets for translational science and I&E (Innovation and Enterprise). It’s clear that biotechnology here in Singapore is on the climb, it is growing at a fast rate, and you (the innovators) will want to be here when things happen.’