We are excited to announce that SABio will be among exhibitors at Biopharma Asia Convention 2014, which will take place in March 10-13, 2014 at Suntec Convention & Exhibition Centre. The 7th annual BioPharma Asia Convention is the leading event for Asia's biopharma industry. Bringing together decision makers and influencers from pharma, biotech, academia, CROs and CMOs it delivers an unparalleled opportunity to convene, network and deliberate.

We invite you to stop by SABio's booth C40, which will be located in the Ruby area. Furthermore, SABio will present a poster on its ongoing R&D projects in the poster exhibit area. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Last week we commemorated the relocation of SABio laboratories to NTU Innovation Centre. The event to mark this occasion, RNAi Scientific Session, was held on November 6, 2013, and was attended by scientists, researchers and technopreneurs from NTU and other Singapore universities. A talk about RNAi, its applications and methodology was given by Prof. Mariano Garcia-Blanco, an internationally renowned expert in RNA biology.

SABio team thanks all the participants for making this event a success. Our thanks also goes to Genewired team, whose members attended our event. Recent relocation of SABio laboratories to NTU has been featured on Genewired.

It has been nearly two months since SABio relocated to the vibrant and welcoming research community at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) campus. To commemorate the occasion, we are organising a scientific session dedicated to RNA Interference (RNAi), to which you are cordially invited.

A talk, titled "RNA Interference, a Powerful Tool to Investigate Gene Function (Caution: Like All Powerful Methods, It Must Be Handled with Care)" will be given by Prof. Mariano Garcia-Blanco, a world-renowned expert in RNA biology. Prof. Garcia-Blanco is Director at Duke Center for RNA Biology, Duke University, USA; Charles D. Watts Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, USA; Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for European Alternative Splicing Network of Excellence, the International Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council (USA), and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The talk will address:

• RNAi background, applications and methodology
• How to use RNAi in reductionist experiments & en masse
• Method concerns and limitations and how these can be assuaged

To attend, please register here. We are looking forward to seeing you at the event!

We are excited to announce that effective September 1, 2013, SABio opened its new laboratory and office at the Innovation Centre at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). We are looking forward to further growing in the vibrant Innovation Centre incubator environment with ample possibilities for interactions with innovative biotech, medtech, engineering and IT companies started by NTU students.

Since relocation, we have closed our former lab at SingHealth Research Facilities at Outram Park. We will warmly remember our stay at the SingHealth lab, where SABio has matured into a  reputable home-grown biologic reagents producer. SABio  started its operations there 2.5 years ago, and our first products were synthetic oligonucleotides and siRNA, which were beta-tested by SingHealth and  Duke-NUS laboratories. They later became loyal and supportive customers. SABio has also further expanded its biologics offerings by introducing catalogue antibodies, custom antibody production services, and synthetic peptides. The RNA product spectrum has also grown, as new products and custom protocols were developed by our R&D team. 
 
Upon relocation to NTU, SABio continues its R&D projects in RNA and antibody field incepted over the last two years, and is constantly on a look out for new opportunities to grow its innovations, technology and business. Here at NTU we foresee further opportunities for collaborations and partnerships, while will continue fostering valuable relationships we developed during our stay at the vicinity of SingHealth, NCCS, and Duke-NUS.

“Kristina’s demonstrated success in engaging critical stakeholders of the companies where she has worked and her focused leadership style will be critical as we work to grow SABio and bring its products to the market” said Mr Damien Lim, General Partner of BioVeda Capital and a member of the SABio board.

Said Dr. Rutkute, “I look forward to lead and continue to grow SABio into a profitable company that can serve the biologics needs of the research communities in the universities, research institutes, academic medicine centers of public hospitals and biotech/pharmaceutical companies in Singapore and the region.”

Dr. Rutkute was previously with Acumen Research Laboratories, and the Institute of Molecular & Cell Biology at A*STAR.  She received her B.Sc in Biochemistry and a M.Sc in Medical Biology from Vilnius University, Lithuania, and a Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Kentucky, College of Medicine, USA.

SABio’s founder A/Prof. Subhash Vasudevan (Duke-NUS), who researched Celgosivir since 2007 as a means to fight dengue, was one of the initiators of the trial. The drug was initially developed for other infectious diseases like HIV, and was not used to treat dengue fever until now. “We are taking an old drug and asking if there is a new use for it,” said A/Prof. Subhash Vasudevan . “There are no antiviral drugs ready to go into clinical trials against dengue at this point, except for this one”.

Pending the outcome of clinical trials, Celgosivir may become the world’s first drug to treat dengue fever. Currently, only  supportive treatment is available for dengue. About 5,330 dengue cases were reported in Singapore last year, and up to 100 million people are infected annually worldwide.

More information about CELADEN clinical trial can be found at www.celaden.sg .

“Appointment to a named chair is the highest honor the university can bestow on a member of the faculty,” says Joseph Heitman, MD, PhD, James B. Duke Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. “Mariano has always demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and is a leader in RNA biology.”

The distinguished professorship awarded to Prof. Garcia-Blanco is named in memory of the late Charles D. Watts, a pioneering African-American surgeon who founded the Lincoln Community Health Center. As the first African-American to be certified by a surgical specialty board in North Carolina, Watts is remembered for taking care of the poor and underserved in Durham. He spent more than 50 years advocating for civil/human rights and for the quality of medical care for all residents of Durham.

Prof. Garcia-Blanco is internationally-recognized for his scientific contributions including the discovery of the alternative splicing factor PTB (polypyrimidine tract binding protein) and the demonstration of its role in regulating splice site choice, the demonstration that splice sites are paired by three-dimensional diffusion rather than scanning, the development of methods to image alternative splicing decisions in mammals in vivo, and the recent discovery of virus host factors required for yellow fever virus and dengue virus propagation in human cells and in insect cells.

Prof. Garcia-Blanco is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for European Alternative Splicing Network of Excellence, the Council of Scientific Advisers, the International Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council, and a Trustee of the Puerto Rico Trust for Science, Research and Technology. In 2011, he was elected to the Association of American Physicians (AAP).

Because good quality biologics are more expensive and take longer to arrive in Singapore laboratories relative to those in the US, Japan and Europe, scientists in Singapore face a competitive disadvantage. However, SABio will help alleviate this disadvantage by providing the local and fast-expanding Asian research community with high-quality, affordable and on-time research reagents.

‘SABio’s high quality products will enjoy the valued status of the ‘Made in Singapore’ brand and thus support the vision of Singapore as a research and biomedicine hub,’ said Rene Jaeggi, SABio’s managing director.

SABio was founded by two entrepreneurial researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Mariano Garcia-Blanco and Subhash Vasudevan.

It also recently closed its Series A financing with an investment from BV Healthcare II, a life science fund managed by BioVeda Capital.