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Duke-NUS sparks innovation among tomorrow’s healthcare change-makers

Course participants and course organisers including Prof Silke Vogel from the Graduate Studies Department at Duke-NUS (left), Asst Prof Raihan Jumat (second right) and Assoc Prof Christopher Laing (right) as well as Dr Janette Dixon (third from right) from JustPartnering and Asst Prof Sarada Bulchand from the Centre for Career Readiness at Duke-NUS (front row, first right) // Credit: Wee Yanshou

“Innovation is not just about projects, it is about people,” stated Associate Professor Christopher Laing during his opening remarks at Duke-NUS Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship course celebration on 11 November.

“Singapore needs more life sciences innovators, more serial entrepreneurs. Whether they jump into industry jobs, or they go out and they launch new startup companies or they stay in academia and collaborate with the private sector, these are the people who are willing to take strategic risk in envisioning the future of health,” added Assoc Prof Laing, Vice-Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke-NUS.

The 75 participants who gathered at the School’s Amphitheatre, were united by a shared interest in exploring projects or even careers at this interface. Among them were the graduates of the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship course, many of whom had been motivated to enrol to gain a better understanding of commercialisation, a subject that had been a bit of a black box.

By enrolling in the course, the 22 participants gained a deeper understanding of the expectations, requirements and trade-offs involved in pursuing commercialisation opportunities through modules that cover intellectual property and licensing, academia-industry collaborations and starting a biotech. The weekly lessons, designed collaboratively with consultants JustPartnering, were further enhanced through a series of guest speakers who shared their experiences.

Dr Eugenia Ong, a course participant and principal research scientist with Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme and the Viral Research and Experimental Medicine Centre at SingHealth Duke-NUS, said that before this course, she had no idea what the pathway to commercialisation involved and the skills that she might need. “I found that [the answer] in the course. Because it exposed us to a lot of the skill sets that we otherwise would not be able to really experience unless you are on this journey yourself.” 

The 13-week course, a collaboration among Duke-NUS’ Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Centre for Career Readiness and Master of International Translational Medicine Programme, was designed to give early career researchers an educational experience between one-off seminars or workshops already offered and the more intensive master’s programme.

While the students learn the basic concepts of the commercialisation pathway, Assoc Prof Laing, who is also the course director, highlighted that more importantly, “they apply what they have been learning through the class to a course-long project that they present in the final class.”

For Mr Look Zhuojian, an MD-PhD student at Duke-NUS, the course was particularly pertinent. He along with his mentor has demonstrated the effectiveness of a cell therapy in treating a type of corneal scarring that can lead to blindness. “In my process of trying to find out more how to quality and make this a GMP-grade system and GMP-grade protocol I found it necessary to go through the knowhow as well as the expertise that this course has provided.”

As well as exposing early career researchers and clinicians to different career opportunities and pathways, the course is part of the graduation requirements for the Master of International Translational Medicine students.

Lead educator for the master’s programme Assistant Professor Raihan Jumat said that half of the master’s students brought their own projects to this course, directly applying “the skills that were taught in this course to their entrepreneurial pursuits”. 

Among their projects are a less invasive method for in-vitro fertilisation and an AI tool to detect and flag human errors in filing radiological scans, a tool that has already been deployed in a hospital in Vietnam.

With the first run successfully completed, the team is now looking to enrol the next cohort of future innovators for the second run which is planned for 2025. While the course offers insights and understanding of the different pathways to commercialisation, it also offers a platform for students, faculty and guest speakers to network, an essential aspect to success. 

The end of course celebration, which brought professionals from academia, healthcare and industry together, too then, provided an opportunity for the students to apply what they had learnt, potentially marking the start of new careers in life science innovation and entrepreneurship.

For those already active in the innovation space, Assoc Prof Laing called on them to lend their support: “I hope that you'll join me in inspiring our future leaders to take up this mantle.” 


The 75-strong crowd marks the end of the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship course with a group photo // Credit: Wee Yanshou