Under the leadership of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore more than a decade ago adopted the growth strategy of making the medical industry the core of the nation's industrial development.
Lee, the eldest son of the city state's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, known for his "developmental dictatorship," has invited the world's top ranking medical scientists to the National University of Singapore (NUS), offering them abundant research funds and high salaries.
I have been told that, in 2002, professor Yoshiaki Ito of the Institute for Virus Research of Kyoto University moved to the Cancer Science Institute of the NUS Department of Medicine just before his retirement age, together with nine researchers of his laboratory. Since then, he has been engaged in research related to carcinogenic genes as head of the Singaporean institute.