Towards greater impact in health technology assessment: horizon scanning for new and emerging technologies in Singapore.

Objectives: To alert policy makers early about emerging health technologies that could significantly impact the healthcare system at the clinical, financial and organizational levels, the Agency for Care Effectiveness (ACE) in Singapore established a horizon scanning system (HSS) in 2019. This paper describes the development of the ACE HSS and showcases its application with cell and gene therapy products as the first example.

Methods: A literature review of existing HSS methods, including the processes of the EuroScan International Network and other overseas horizon scanning agencies, was done to inform the development of our horizon scanning framework.

APP upregulation contributes to retinal ganglion cell degeneration via JNK3.

Axonal injury is a common feature of central nervous system insults. Upregulation of amyloid precursor protein (APP) is observed following central nervous system neurotrauma and is regarded as a marker of central nervous system axonal injury. However, the underlying mechanism by which APP mediates neuronal death remains to be elucidated.

Phage display screening against a set of targets to establish peptide-based sugar mimetics and molecular docking to predict binding site.

A novel selection approach is presented to screen phage display peptide libraries against sets of receptors that share specificity for the same ligand. This strategy was applied to the discovery of glycomimetic peptides. Through these screens, a number of peptide clones were discovered that bind the lectins used in the screen, in a sugar competitive manner.

Stem cells and combinatorial science.

Stem cell-based technologies have the potential to help cure a number of cell degenerative diseases. Combinatorial and high throughput screening techniques could provide tools to control and manipulate the self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells. This review chronicles historic and recent progress in the stem cell field involving both pluripotent and multipotent cells, and it highlights relevant cellular signal transduction pathways.