Leading cancer researcher named Saw Swee Hock Centennial Professor and Director of Cancer Research Centre

June 2008

Prof Daniel Tenen, a world leader in the field of transcriptional regulation, haematopoiesis and cancer, has been appointed as the inaugural Saw Swee Hock Centennial Professor in Medical Sciences. He also heads the new Cancer Research Centre of Excellence at the National University of Singapore (NUS) as Director.

The Saw Swee Hock Centennial Professorship in Medical Sciences was made possible by a generous $2.6-million gift from Prof Saw Swee Hock (’61) to enable world-renowned professors to teach and research at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at NUS for two years.

Prof Saw, a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and the recipient of a University Award for Outstanding Service, has made many gifts to NUS that have supported, among other things, student bursaries, professorships and the Saw Centre of Financial Studies at NUS.

Prof Tenen, who is a Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, will lead the Cancer Stem Cells Programme which focuses on cancers that affect Singaporeans.

He said: "The kind of expertise I am providing is my science. The way you lead is to produce. Research Directors that scientists respect the most are the leaders who are still doing it."

He added: “There is outstanding cancer research going on in NUS and Singapore has the potential to become one of the leaders in the treatment of cancer affecting all ethnic groups. The symbiotic relationship between the medical school and hospital has been recognised in leading centres around the world and in the US as possibly the best platform for a rapid and efficient transit from bench to bedside and back again.”

The NUS Cancer Research Centre of Excellence is only Singapore’s second Research Centre of Excellence (RCE). The National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Education will support the Cancer RCE with a total funding of $172 million over seven years. The Centre expects to train 100 graduate students and 70 postdoctoral fellows in its laboratories in its first five years.