Overview
NUHS has a very important track record of clinical research, hosting more than 100 clinical projects carried out within the National University Hospital and National University Singapore. This has led to discoveries that are reshaping the way we practice medicine, in Singapore and internationally.
In 2008, our institution hosted 33 PI-initiated clinical trials and 45 Sponsored clinical trials, the later with multi-million support to our clinicians. An estimate of 5,039 patients benefited from the alternative treatment offered by these trials. Many of the clinical research carried out in the NUHS clinical trial programs had led to publications in prestigious international journals. The Investigational Medicine Unit also known as IMU facilitates most of the sponsored clinical trials administered in our institution. IMU serves as a core facility providing services such as clinical research and administrative support, training in clinical trial management and storage of trial drugs and biological samples. Apart from the IMU, most clinical trials are carried out within the clinic areas of the hospital.
Also in 2008, and from a total of $81 million in research grants and sponsored funding committed to NUHS, approximately $15 million was committed to the clinical departments of our institution for many clinical research projects funded by major agencies including National Medical Research Council, Biomedical Research Council, National Kidney Foundation and National Healthcare Group. In Year 2008, 318 publications in peer reviewed journals were published, including several articles published in the Journal of Clinical Cancer Research, Hepatology, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine.
Committed to excellence in Clinical Trials and Clinical Research in general, NUHS is re-shaping the campus to expand its building and infrastructural support for the conduct translational and clinical research. Two key developments include the Centre for Translational Medicine and the new NUH extension (above the new MRT station), both hosting key research developments and scheduled to be operational in the first quarter of 2012. .
Key clinical research developments in our campus in the last years include:
Warfarin treatment (the Asian phenotype) - The team discovered that different dosages of anti-clotting drug, Warfarin is required to achieve the same effects in genetically different ethnic groups. These findings are currently validated at NUH and can potentially lead to being one of the first drugs adjusted on patient's genotype.
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