Duke-NUS Singapore

The St. Baldrick's Foundation now proudly supports the Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) Pediatric Cancer Research Fund. The fund has a number of exciting projects since its inception in 2011. These include the Singapore Childhood Cancer Survivor Study at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, examining long term consequences of therapy. We have also funded several laboratory studies that aim to uncover underlying causes of several cancers including leukemia, osteosarcoma (bone cancer), and glioblastoma multiforme (brain cancer), with the hope that this will lead to improved treatments.

Professor David Virshup, Director of the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program, Duke-NUS

As part of the Duke-NUS Pediatric Cancer Research Fund project, Professor David Virshup, a pediatrician and Director of the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Research Program at Duke-NUS, teamed up with scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore to apply cutting edge techniques developed in Singapore to better understand the genetic alterations that cause osteosarcoma.

Glioblastoma is a brain tumor that is especially difficult to treat. Associate Professor Koji Itahana studied why these cancers are especially resistant to drugs.

Associate Professor Tiong Ong was funded to study mutations in leukemia that might help doctors pick better drugs for treatment.

Lim Yan Yin at KKWCH is leading a study funded by SBF donations, on improved detection of chemotherapy side effects.

Duke-NUS is a strategic collaboration between two of the world’s top institutions for higher education – Duke University in the US and the National University of Singapore (NUS). It is committed to developing future leaders in medicine. Its 4-year graduate-entry medical program is based on an innovative and highly rigorous curriculum designed to develop researchers and practitioners who are exceptionally skilled in medical research and patient care. Duke-NUS also offers M.D./PhD and PhD programs. Biomedical research is pivotal to Duke-NUS and it is expected that discoveries that come out of the school’s five signature research programs will have a huge and positive impact on medicine in Singapore overall.

To make a general donation directly toward the Duke-NUS Pediatric Cancer Research Fund, please click here.

For more information about Duke-NUS, please visit www.duke-nus.edu.sg or find us on Facebook.