SEOUL & SINGAPORE-- May 17, 2023 -- Next&Bio Inc. (Co-CEO: HyunSook Lee, Ji-Hun Yang), a company that has developed an organoid-based precision medicine drug discovery and development platform, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on the establishment of collaboration to realize the development of novel precision medicine therapeutics using cancer-organoids.

Under the MOU, CSI Singapore and Next&Bio will discuss opportunities to establish a joint cancer organoid laboratory, and to pursue joint projects. Under discussion will be the potential for Next&Bio to utilize their organoid culture technology to generate an organoid bank through collaborations with experts at CSI Singapore, which can be used for cancer patient-derived organoid-based research projects and developing patient-specific drug evaluation platforms using organoids.

The proposed joint cancer organoid laboratory would add to Next&Bio’s global network of organoid-based research collaborations aimed at developing organoid-based solutions for pressing research needs. The proposed collaboration with CSI Singapore will take advantage of the diverse ethnic backgrounds represented in Singapore to create an Asian hub for cancer organoid-based precision medicine.

“Singapore, where many global pharmaceutical companies have established R&D research centers, has demographic and geographical advantages that allow it to serve as the Asian hub for organoid-based cancer precision medicine,” said Prof. Hyunsook Lee, Co-CEO of Next&Bio. “In addition, we expect to benefit from synergies in technology development resulting from collaborations with world-class scientists and clinicians at CSI Singapore on organoid-based research in Asian cancer patients, including individuals of Chinese, Malay, or Indian descent, outside of Korea. We will make further efforts to accelerate the realization of precision medicine to treat cancer by leveraging Next&Bio’s organoid culture technology and CSI Singapore’s unparalleled cancer research expertise.”

“Cancer is highly heterogeneous from patient to patient, requiring a precision medicine approach for individualized treatment. Cancer organoids that can reproduce the heterogeneity of patient tissues in vitro play an important role in research on personalized cancer medicine,” said Prof. Ashok Venkitaraman, Director of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, and a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. “Scientists and clinicians who study major cancers, such as breast, colon, and liver cancer, may use cancer organoids generated in the proposed collaboration with Next&Bio to conduct research. We look forward to building an organoid bank at CSI Singapore with multiple cancer tissues to further facilitate research into individualized treatment.”