Collaboration to Realise the Prevention of Chronic Diseases in South East Asia Announced

Nightingale Health Ltd has announced the first step in a major collaboration with the National University of Singapore (NUS), one of the world’s leading universities to realise the prevention of chronic diseases in South East Asia.
In the first phase of the collaboration, Nightingale will provide NUS with novel biomarker data for 5,000 blood samples from the Singapore Multiethnic Cohort (MEC) collection, representing the Malay, Indian and Chinese populations in Singapore. The biomarker data is being used to identify biomarkers that predict chronic diseases, particularly focusing on diabetes mellitus. Based on the results of the first phase, Nightingale, working with NUS, aims to expand the initiative to tens of thousands of samples from Singaporean cohorts and biobank collections, and to cover broader spectrum of chronic diseases.
It has been widely suggested that ethnic differences play an important role in the development of chronic diseases due to genetic background and environmental exposures, such as diet. This initiative is one of the largest in the world, aiming to improve the understanding of chronic diseases for Southeast Asian populations and eventually being able to tailor prevention and management of diseases to the needs of the population.
Professor Tai E Shyong from the Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS and the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS said: “The Singapore Multiethnic Cohort creates a unique research setting to study how to improve the prediction of type 2 diabetes, coronary artery calcification, and changes in cardiovascular risk factors in the Singaporean population.”
Professor Rob M. van Dam from Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS said: “It’s an interesting opportunity to examine how these biomarkers are associated with dietary and other lifestyle factors and may mediate associations between lifestyle factors, cardiovascular disease risk factors, and risk of type 2 diabetes. Moreover, potential biomarker associations can be replicated with other studies around the world carried out using Nightingale’s technology, enabling more detailed analysis of the findings in Singapore.”
Teemu Suna, CEO and Founder, Nightingale Health said: “We are excited about this initiative with NUS, as it brings large-scale Southeast Asian sample collections to an international platform, benefitting medical researchers in Singapore and South East Asia but also having a global impact.”