By Bryan Walsh/ Singapore
July 23, 2006
TIME

American researchers -- fed up with politics getting in the way of science -- are packing up and heading to Singapore, which is delighted to have them.

For a serial kidnapper, Philip Yeo looks harmless enough. But to hear some people tell it, he's a dangerous man. Over the past six years, Yeo has been roaming the world, trailing talented scientists in Washington; San Diego; Palo Alto, Calif.; Edinburgh and elsewhere, and spiriting them back to his home country of Singapore. Like any proud collector, Yeo never tires of ticking off his most prized trophies: former National Cancer Institute star Edison Liu, American husband-and-wife team Nancy Jenkins and Neal Copeland, British cancer researcher David Lane. "I'm a people snatcher," he says unashamedly.

What distinguishes Yeo from other kidnappers, of course, is that his targets go willingly. They happily relocate to Singapore's new 2 million-sq.-ft. Biopolis research center, where they can concentrate on one thing they can't always study so easily back home: stem cells. Just last week President George W. Bush used the first veto of his presidency to block a congressional action that would have lifted his 2001 ban on federal funding for most stem-cell research, ensuring that cell lines will remain scarce and money short at research centers lacking the state funding or private wealth to thumb their nose at dollars from Washington.

While Bush's action infuriated U.S. scientists, political catfights aren't the only things that make stem-cell research a challenge. The science is complex, the cost is high, and the efforts are scattered all over the world. Enter Singapore, which has begun offering itself as a combination sanctuary and think tank for scientists in the field.

The idea that buttoned-up Singapore, better known for punitive caning and a onetime ban on chewing gum, should emerge as a center of enlightenment seems unlikely. But the government sees both scientific and fiscal promise in the biomed field. This month, Singapore announced a doubling of its R&D budget, to $8.2 billion over the next five years, making it a regional research hub, particularly in stem cells. That's attractive to frustrated American scientists--and worrisome to people who want to see the U.S. retain its scientific edge.

"I think there is a risk of a brain drain, and we are seeing it," says Christopher Thomas Scott, executive director of the Stanford Program on Stem Cells in Society. Yeo, for one, is blunt about taking advantage of the American political climate. "I go to the U.S., and I tell those scientists, Come to Singapore and finish your work," he says.

Singapore's leadership in stem-cell research is not new. In 1994, Ariff Bongso, a Sri Lanka--born embryologist at the National University of Singapore, became the first person to isolate human embryonic stem cells, and in 2002 he discovered a way to grow stem-cell lines without the use of animal cells, which could make it easier to find clinical uses in human beings. Bongso achieved those breakthroughs nearly alone, but that would not be the case anymore, thanks to Biopolis, the government's $300 million bet on bioscience.

A group of seven asymmetrical buildings with sci-fi names like Nanos and Proteos, all connected by transparent sky bridges, Biopolis is meant to be a self-enclosed science city, housing government research institutes, biotech start-ups and global drug companies. At the ground level, researchers from some 50 countries meet and mingle over spicy laksa noodles, Philly cheesesteaks and German beer, discussing projects in English, the most widely spoken language in the multiethnic city. Inside, the well-stocked labs positively gleam. Ng Huck Hui, a team leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore, points to an expensive array of semiconductors. "We bought that three years ago, so by our standards it's pretty old," he says. "Might be time to get a new one." Says Lane, the Edinburgh expat who moved to Singapore in 2004 to head the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology: "The funding here is extremely good. You're in scientific heaven."

And it's only getting better. Late last year the government launched the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, chaired by Cambridge University--based stem-cell scientist Roger Pederson, which will set aside $45 million for research in the field over the next three years. Money also comes from university grants and offshore organizations like the U.S.-based Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The diabetes group has helped fund biotech start-up ES Cell International (ESI), home to Briton--and now Singapore resident--Alan Colman, who was part of the British team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996. ESI manufactures its own embryonic-stem-cell lines and is working on shaping those cells into insulin-producing pancreatic tissue and cardiac muscle, which could be given to patients suffering from diabetes or heart disease. It's exactly the kind of potentially profitable research Singapore wants, and the company hopes to begin clinical trials next year. As with most stem-cell work at Biopolis, the focus at ESI is on building a broad business. Rather than designing patient-specific stem cells, grown from the very people who would later use them, ESI wants to create an inventory of more generalized cells that could be matched to a population of patients--the stem-cell equivalent of a blood bank.

"I think Singapore punches well above its weight in this area," says Colman. "That's why I'm here." Another reason is Singapore's liberal regulations, which allow stem cells to be cultured from embryos up to 14 days old, although reproductive cloning is strictly illegal.

Given its small size, Singapore will never really threaten the U.S.'s overall biomedical muscle, nor is it trying to. But it's impossible to witness the buzz at Biopolis or meet scientists who have chosen Southeast Asia over Stanford and not wonder how much the U.S. could achieve in stem-cell research if it were as science mad as this city-state of 4.4 million. For all the hundreds of millions of dollars Singapore has devoted to high-tech lab equipment and recruiting top scientists from around the world, it is spending just as much to educate a homegrown core of young Singaporean scientists to continue the work. Until they come of age, Yeo will be just as happy to come shopping for talent in the U.S. And as long as the stem-cell debate stumbles on in the U.S., American scientists will be just as happy to go.