SINGAPORE’S VACCINES AND DRUGS CAN NOW ACCESS WORLD MARKETS

SINGAPORE, Oct 28 (Bernama) – Singapore became the first non-Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member in Asia to gain the
OECD-Mutual Acceptance of Data framework (MAD) status, making the vaccines and
drugs developed and tested in the city-state faster access to the world’s top
biomedical markets.

With the status, data from pre-clinical trials conducted by testing
facilities in Singapore which are compliant with the requirements of good
laboratory practice (GLP) will be accepted by some 30 OECD and non-OECD members,
including the United States, European Union and Japan.

In a statement, SPRING Singapore, the enterprise development agency for
growing innovative companies and fostering a competitive SME sector, said the
MAD membership would strengthen Singapore’s position as one of Asia’s leading
pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences research and development centres.

“Achieving the OECD-MAD status is significant as it will help fuel stronger
growth for Singapore’s biomedical sciences industry,” SPRING Singapore Chief
Executive, Png Cheong Boon, said.

He said companies could now fully leverage on Singapore’s GLP-compliant
testing facilities to accelerate their drug discovery and development
activities, thus shortening their time-to-market for new products.

Re-testing overseas would also become unnecessary, thus making it easier and
cheaper for Singaporean companies, he added.

To gain the recognition, Singapore went through stringent examination by the
OECD to ensure that Singapore’s test facilities were as rigorous as those in the
OECD countries and were able to produce pre-clinical data of comparable quality,
the agency said.

-– BERNAMA