The next big thing

All scientists are looking for the next big thing, according to Professor Teh Bin Tean, Deputy Medical Director of Research at the National Cancer Singapore (NCCS). And this is presumably why in 2010, Prof Teh, who was then the head of a prestigious laboratory in the United States, decided to come back to Singapore to further his research into cancers that affect the Asian population.

Following his post-doctoral appointment in the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, Prof Teh joined the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) in Michigan, United States as Senior Scientific Investigator heading the Laboratory of Cancer Genetics in 2000. He concentrated on doing research in kidney cancer, established a worldwide network of collaborators and grew a tissue bank that would serve as rich resource for cancer research.

When Prof Teh was appointed the founding director of the joint NCCS-VARI laboratory in 2007, he and his team were able to draw on the tissue bank and charge headfirst to fulfilling its mission of serving as a bridge between the United States and Singapore, and between translational research and clinical medicine for cancer. Prof Teh and his transnational lab worked on getting a better understanding of the genomic studies of cancers common among Asian populations. His research at NCCS-VARI made him a recipient of the Singapore Translational Research Investigator Award (STaR) by the National Medical Research Council in 2010.

That was Prof Teh’s first STaR award and it supported translational cancer research in the areas of cancer drug resistance, ongoing translational research programmes and biliary cancer. Since then his award has been renewed twice.

Biliary cancer or bile duct cancer is a rare disease, but not in Laos and Cambodia. There the rampant consumption of a specific type of raw fish, liver fluke, and genetics meant that it affected many people. In 2012, Prof Teh and his team discovered the liver fluke as the carcinogen that caused the high incidence of bile duct cancer in those populations.

Following his instincts to uncover other cancer-causing carcinogens, Prof Teh and his teams at NCCS and Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) made a significant scientific finding that would change behaviour in Asia. They discovered that aristolochic acid, an herbal compound found in many Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM), was implicated in urinary tract cancers. Their findings were published in the high impact research journal, Science Translational Medicine, and the news was heavily covered in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Chinese media in 2017. These cancers have a high incidence in Taiwan, which caused the Taiwanese health authorities to issue a cautionary alert to the public.

These breakthroughs are part of Prof Teh’s personal mission to serve all populations.

“Health issues know no boundaries,” said Prof Teh, who is also the Deputy Director (Global Relations) of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine, that drives the use and standardisation of precision medicine and health for diseases relevant to Asian populations. “If we have the resources to do research in Singapore that can help our neighbours, it’s our responsibility to do it and share that knowledge.”

Prof Teh Bin Tean, Deputy Medical Director (Research) of the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) stands in the top right with a team of NCCS and team of NCCS and Duke-NUS Medical School scientists who mapped the genetics of the durian in the journal Nature Genetics in 2017.                         Photo credit: Duke-NUS Medical School

In 2017, Prof Teh and Professor Patrick Tan from Duke-NUS led a team of Singaporean scientists to complete the world’s first genomic map of Singapore’s favourite fruit, the durian. Findings were published in the journal Nature Genetics and has set the tone for the next phase of Prof Teh’s work.

“Sequencing the Mao Shan Wang durian, was really a result of all of us getting together for a fruit feast every durian season. As scientists, we were naturally curious, so we thought, why not sequence it?”

Prof Teh shared, “What began as a passion project has blossomed into something else. Since it was possible to sequence the durian and understand its genetics, why can’t we do the same for other plants and understand how compounds can cause or treat cancer?”

Prof Teh’s next phase of research to study the biodiversity of plants and what potential therapeutics it could lead to, is both uncharted and exciting. But if there’s anyone who can take on this next big thing, it’s Prof Teh.