One of Singapore’s top scientific research honour, the Singapore Translational Research (STaR) Investigator Award, has recently been conferred to two of the Institute’s Principal Investigators. Awardees of this prestigious award are internationally-renowned institute Director Prof Daniel Tenen, and Senior Principal Investigator, Prof Toshio Suda.

The STaR award is an initiative by the Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Council (NMRC), an organisation set up in 1994 to oversee the development and advancement of Singapore’s medical research landscape. Developed to attract and nurture established investigators for cutting-edge translational and clinical studies, the STaR is awarded to those possessing excellent and sustained track records of outstanding research in their respective fields. Recipients will act to foster even stronger collaborative ties among various research institutions within and outside Singapore.

Separately, CSI extends a warm welcome to Prof Toshio Suda, who comes on board the Institute as Senior Principal Investigator this year. Prof Suda’s research expertise lies in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and the HSCs niches, which he has closely studied for over 30 years. He will be mapping his extensive academic and teaching experience at CSI and work on translating future findings into clinical settings for the treatment of haematological diseases and other age-related diseases such as organ fibrosis from the perspective of stem cells, their niches, stem cell aging and cancer stem cells. Prof Suda has also branched out to metabolomics research which can be a powerful tool to mine for unknown regulatory mechanisms of the stem cell and the cancer cell metabolism.