Singapore biotech drive loses star UK scientists
SINGAPORE, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Top scientists David and Birgitte Lane are set to leave Singapore to take up new positions at Scotland's University of Dundee, which could complicate the city-state's multi-billion dollar biotechnology ambitions.
Cancer expert Lane and his wife Birgitte, a skin cell expert, would return to Scotland in January to lead the new Division of Molecular Medicine at Dundee's College of Life Sciences, a statement on the university's Web site said.
The Singapore government, which has attracted some of the world's top researchers to its shores in a bid to build up its biomedical industry, downplayed the move.
"Sir David Lane is not leaving the Agency for Science, Technology and Research and Singapore," Andre Wan, deputy executive director of the Biomedical Research Council at Singapore's A*STAR said on Thursday in a statement.
It added that Lane, who came to the city-state in 2004, will be "physically in Singapore for at least 3 months a year".
The Lanes could not be immediately contacted for comment.
The husband-and-wife team were among top scientists who relocated to Singapore amid a multi-billion dollar drive by the city-state to build a biotechnology industry from scratch.
David Lane chairs Singapore's Biomedical Research Council, which oversees the city-state's biomedical research and development (R&D) activities. He is also executive director of Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, which hosts more than 400 scientists.
Other leading scientists who have relocated to Singapore include Alan Colman -- the British scientist whose team cloned Dolly the sheep -- and U.S. cancer specialist Edison Liu.
But at the end of last year, a World Bank report said Singapore had only a 50-50 chance of succeeding in its biomed drive, and warned a big part of the biotech sector is made up of "footloose" star researchers who could leave the city-state at short notice.
The policy also came under fire from Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's own sister, paediatrician Lee Wei Ling, who has called for a review of the country's biomedical strategy, saying research resources were stretched too thin. [ID:nSIN227593]
Singapore is trying to overhaul its economy by scaling back reliance on traditional manufacturing activity and moving into new areas such as education, casinos and scientific research in the biomedical industry.
Output in Singapore's biomedical sector grew more than 30 percent in 2006 to S$23 billion ($15.3 billion), accounting for a quarter of value-added manufacturing output.
"It would still be some years before Singapore will have a biotechnology industry that is anchored by R&D," said Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB-GK Research.
"They were not the first (to leave). They would not be the last," Song told Reuters.
Earlier this year, A*STAR replaced Philip Yeo, the civil servant who had headed the drive for foreign talent, with new chairman Lim Chuan Poh, a former army chief.
($1=1.506 Singapore dollars)
