Our Research

The Principle Investigator (PI):

Assistant Professor Amos Loh Hong Pheng

Senior Consultant

Chairman of the Division of Surgery, Department of Paediatric Surgery, KK Women's and Children's Hospital

Dr Amos Loh is Chairman of the Division of Surgery and Senior Consultant at the Department of Paediatric Surgery, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, and Assistant Professor at the Duke NUS Medical School. He is also Principal Investigator of the VIVA-KKH Paediatric Solid Tumour Research Laboratory and Chairman of the VIVA-KKH Paediatric Brain and Solid Tumour Programme, and has a clinical practice and academic research focus in paediatric surgical oncology and childhood solid tumours.

Dr Loh obtained his medical degree from the National University of Singapore in 2002. He trained subsequently in general and paediatric surgery and was awarded the Academy of Medicine Singapore College of Surgeons Gold Medal in paediatric surgery. He pursued a paediatric surgical oncology fellowship and a research fellowship at St Jude Children's Research Hospital, for which he was awarded a National Medical Research Council research training award. 

His academic interests are in clinical and translational research in paediatric solid tumours, in particular, patient-derived preclinical models of paediatric solid tumors, and novel biomarker discovery for prognostication and therapeutic stratification.

About the BST Laboratory:

Using a translational research pipeline, we adopt a targeted approach to advance scientific findings from basic, to pre-clinical and early clinical development, and on to early phase clinical trials, for various paediatric brain and solid tumours. Given the wide variety of tumour types, the Programme has adopted a special focus on development of personalised medical management strategies through individualized molecular and phenotypic tests.

Current Initiatives:

Modeling, Analysis and Translational Therapeutics for Tumours of Childhood (MAT3CH)

This platform develops orthotopic patient-derived xenografts (PDX) and in vitro cell line models of paediatric brain and solid tumours, in order to facilitate molecular characterization and evaluation of novel therapies for these diseases. This programme facilitates the molecular characterization of paediatric solid tumours in Asian children for the identification of pathogenic molecular aberrations, comparisons of inter-population variations, and in-vivo evaluation of novel agents for translation into early-phase human trials.

BST programme achievements:

(a) Translational research

• Programme has published a total of 81 publications and peer-reviewed journals and 71 presentations as at end 2021.
• Programme has developed and launched 5 key new lab-developed tests specially catered for paediatric brain and solid tumours.
• Through local and international collaborations, resource hubs have been launched to share preclinical models of childhood brain and solid tumours that have been established under the Programme’s MAT3CH project since 2015.