Bold statement: Bridging East and West in health science can unlock tailored cures, but it also invites debate about how best to balance global collaboration with local context.
Duke and Duke-NUS are pursuing joint cross-population research to uncover how disease and care differ between Asian and non-Asian populations, using state-of-the-art genomics, medical imaging, and data science. Five research teams from Duke and Duke-NUS have received joint Research Collaboration Pilot Project grants to compare clinical cohorts from Singapore and the United States. The focus areas include infectious diseases, corneal disorders, liver transplant outcomes, diabetes, and lung cancer, with the goal of translating population differences into more accurate diagnoses and targeted treatments.
In Singapore on 15 December 2025, researchers highlighted how understanding genetic variants across populations could transform future health preparedness. One flagship project, co-led by Associate Professor Dennis Ko (Duke University School of Medicine) and Assistant Professor Mart Matthias Lamers (Duke-NUS Medical School), is titled
"An Organoid Single-Cell GWAS Platform for Comparing Infectious Disease Susceptibility in USA vs. Singapore." The team will grow nasal organoids—miniature nasal tissues—from hundreds of donors in both countries, expose them to viruses, and map how genetic differences influence infection at the cellular level. The resulting atlas of genetic susceptibility could accelerate the discovery of new antiviral drugs.
The remaining four projects address high-impact healthcare challenges in liver transplantation, diabetes, lung cancer, and eye disease:
- MIA-Lung: Multiplex IHC Atlas for Lung Cancer (PIs: Laura Alder and Aaron Tan)
- FECD Genetic Risk in Asian and European Populations through Integrative Genomics (PIs: Yi-Ju Li and Jodhbir Mehta)
- Comparative Outcomes in Liver Transplantation: U.S. vs. Singapore (PIs: Debra Sudan and Prema Raj Jeyaraj)
- Comparative Imaging-Based Analysis of Adiposity Distribution and Diabetes Risk in Asian and Non-Asian Populations (PIs: James Jung and Nan Liu)
Disease manifestations, progression, and treatment responses often vary between Asian and non-Asian groups due to a mix of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Studying diverse populations helps researchers identify what drives these differences and how to translate that knowledge into better, more precise care.
Professor Patrick Tan, Dean-designate and Senior Vice-Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, emphasized that advances in genomics and data science now enable large-scale analyses that were not previously possible. He noted that Duke-NUS’s partnerships with Duke University and SingHealth position the institution to support scientifically compelling studies that leverage data from both the U.S. and Singapore.
This year, more than 40 proposals were submitted, and five projects were selected through a competitive review. Each project is jointly led by a Duke PI and a Duke-NUS PI. The U.S. side receives US$100,000, while the Duke-NUS side receives S$100,000, spread over two years.
Since 2009, the Duke–Duke-NUS collaboration has supported over 70 projects with more than S$8.5 million in funding, highlighting a long-standing commitment to accelerating innovative research that addresses urgent global health challenges.
For detailed descriptions of this year’s projects and their expected impacts, please refer to Annex A.
Annex A highlights project-specific aims, such as building an open-source imaging segmentation platform for adiposity and diabetes risk, developing polygenic risk scores that integrate nuclear and mitochondrial variants, and harmonizing international transplant outcomes data to benchmark quality and inform real-time decision-making tools. Collectively, these efforts aim to illuminate how disease biology and treatment responses differ across populations, enabling more precise diagnostics, personalized therapies, and equitable healthcare.
Would you like a more layperson-friendly version that uses simpler terms, or a version that emphasizes one or two projects with a more in-depth lay explanation and practical implications for patients? Also, would you prefer the tone to be more formal or more conversational for a general audience?
