At the heart of the strategic partnership sits the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC), which provides researchers on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus a state-of-the art research space that has been central to the University’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and acted as a critical bridge between clinicians and laboratory science (e.g. including the largest Containment Level Three facility in the UK).
During the COVID pandemic a series of medical webinars for global audiences of general practitioners, general physicians, specialists, postgraduate trainees and medical students had been established in partnership with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), drawing on combined expertise within the RCP, the University of Cambridge and Sunway. This strand is being led by Prof Raja Affendi Raja Ali (Dean of the School of Medical and Life Sciences, Sunway University) on behalf of the Cambridge-Sunway Collaboration.
As part of the collaboration’s programme, Sunway Medical Centre will establish a Clinical Research Centre (CRC) that will become a regional site partner for the University of Cambridge. It is intended that the CRC will become a leader in clinical research in South East Asia while developing capacity to conduct clinical trials. This programme is led by Prof Ian Wilkinson (Professor of Therapeutics, University of Cambridge).
Established a Disease Genomics Programme with the aim of building a world-leading cross-continental collaboration in disease genomics, comprising a Sir Jeffrey Cheah Career Fellowship. The first success of this programme is a recently published research study from Prof Serena Nik-Zainal’s group by developing a ‘metal detector’ algorithm that can hunt down vulnerable tumours.