The Drug Discovery, Past and future Symposium brings together leading thinkers in the field, from Singapore, Israel, Korea and the United States, to work together on tackling global health challenges.

Such global challenges require a global multidisciplinary team, and this is precisely why international research projects such as the Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Inflammatory Diseases, led by Prof Ehud Razin of HUJ, and Prof Paul MacAry of NUS, are so important. In this project, researchers from Israel and Singapore form one team and investigate inflammatory disease with the aim of developing cures to illnesses, which are a leading cause of death around the world.

Israeli academia is known for its innovation and academic excellence. Singapore is a leading academic and research powerhouse in Asia. Bringing these two cultures together can only lead to breakthroughs in this important field and beyond. We thank the National Research Foundation for having the vision to bring together this team and fund their important work under CREATE. CREATEs’ unique “collabarotory” set up allows leading universities from around the globe to come together and perform cutting edge research that otherwise would not have been possible.

Singapore-HUJ Alliance for Research and Enterprise, a research and innovation centre of the Hebrew University, located in Singapore, thus forming a home for Israel-Singapore research collaborations such as this project.

SHARE carries significant value to both Israel and Singapore. As Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong of Singapore said during his visit to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, these partnerships deepen research collaborations between the countries, forming the foundation on which to grow the Singapore-Israel relations further. This symposium exemplifies the significance of this partnership.