MEDICUS - the Podcast by Duke-NUS Medical School

Bloating, constipation, stomach discomfort or an uneasy feeling you cannot quite explain, our gut often sends signals long before we decide to pay attention. In this episode, Duke-NUS alum Dr Tan Yu Bin from Class of 2018, now an Associate Consultant in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Singapore General Hospital, helps us make sense of common gut symptoms, demystifies what happ...

Beyond resting enough, eating healthily and staying active, the famous saying “health is wealth” also emphasises the importance of our mental wellbeing. Yet, it still remains misunderstood and neglected globally, leading to a concerning lack of support for struggling individuals and communities.   In this episode, Assistant Professor Anne-Claire Stona shares how she and her Global Mental Health te...

From virtual reality to 3D-printed tonsils and spines and even digitised human cadavers, the classroom of tomorrow is already here at Duke-NUS. But beyond the cool factor, how do these tools and innovations actually help medical students learn—and how does one decide what tech belongs in the curriculum? In this episode, Professor Fernando Bello shares how his TELI team brings these education-enhan...

The moment you graduate from medical school, a thousand questions and more rush in.  “Will I be ready?” “What’s life like as a junior doctor?” “Did I pick the right specialty?” These are questions that Dr Jeremy Pong, a Class of 2020 graduate who started his career in the middle of a pandemic, is no stranger to. Now as an emergency doctor at Singapore General Hospital, Jeremy looks back at his fir...

Cancer recurrence is often deadlier than the original disease, especially when it spreads undetected. Yet for survivors, post-treatment monitoring can be a financial, emotional and mental burden—relying on costly, invasive tests with no guarantees.  But what if detecting cancer was as simple as a blood test?  In this episode, Dr Debleena Ray, the founder of the biotech startup 2Strands Biosciences...

 Can simply desiring a longer, healthier life help make it a reality? The concept of “manifesting”—the Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024—suggests it might. But as we explore Singapore’s transformation into the world’s first self-made Blue Zone, we find that there’s much more to living longer than just wanting it.   Join us as sociologist Associate Professor Angelique Chan from Duke-...

In Episode 12 of MEDICUS – the podcast, we sit down with immunologist Rukie de Alwis from Duke-NUS’ Centre for Outbreak Preparedness, and virologist Erik Karlsson from the Institute Pasteur in Cambodia, to discuss the threat of bird flu, in particular H5N1, to Southeast Asia. While many headlines talk about the outbreak of H5N1 in cows, a variant of the virus has been circulating in Southeast Asia...

In Episode 11 of MEDICUS – the podcast, we sit down with Devanand Anantham, who leads the new SingHealth Duke-NUS Medical Humanities Institute, to take stock of how far medicine has come, the potential of AI and why it is high time we reframe our conversations about health.  Take for example Mrs Tan. The retiree likes nothing more than to spend hours tending to her garden, but recently her knee ha...

In Episode 10 of MEDICUS – the podcast, we went on a search for a scientist who has woven fitness into his work and family life routine so well that it looks effortless to find out how he does it. With January over, we’re already one month into the New Year, so the pressure to maintain any new or continuing fitness commitment is steadily growing. So, we sat down with Sven Petersen , a principal re...

In Episode 9 of MEDICUS – the podcast, we’re talking to two scientists about what makes for a perfect collaboration. In modern translational science, new breakthroughs more often that are the product of a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration. And these collaborations are at their most successful when it is not just the expertise that is complementary but when the people within t...

In the latest episode of MEDICUS – the Podcast, three scientists talk about what art brings to their lives, how the two interplay for them, and whether they really are two sides of the same coin. In the history of science, Leonardo da Vinci stands out as a giant who mastered both art and science. But there are many more scientists—past and present—who draw on the two, seemingly unrelated, discipli...

In this episode of MEDICUS – the Podcast, we meet two scientists to go fishing. But instead of heading out to sea to cast their lines, their “ocean” is a small tube in which they fish for specific genetic sequences that mark the ends of our chromosomes. Much like the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces, the sequences they hunt for, called telomeres, make sure that our genetic assembly instruction...

As part of this issue of MEDICUS ’ wider focus on how the environment affects health, the MEDICUS team is taking a deeper look into what’s going on when the body perceives things from the environment as a threat. We’re, of course, talking about allergies. And joining us on this episode are: Our special, preteen guest co-host Juno Young, who had a million questions about allergies And immunologist...

“Only sleep when dead.” That’s the rationale that tribes of people, from party animals to early morning exercise devotees, have used to explain their sleep habits. But we may be putting more at stake than we realise when we regularly cut our Zs short because sleep is not just a black hole of downtime. Most adults need about seven to nine hours of sleep a night for optimal performance and health—si...

In this episode, we venture into a veritable mosquito haven—the Duke-NUS insectary, where healthy mosquitoes are grown to help researchers shed light on how new vaccines and even treatments impact the dengue virus when the virus is inside the mosquito.  We also find out which common insect repellents work and which ones will leave you scratching countless bites. Joining us in this episode: -     ...

In this episode of MEDICUS - the Podcast , we talk about the conversation that we dread having the most, one of society’s biggest taboos: death. Joining us on this episode are: Professor Eric Finkelstein , the executive director of the Lien Centre for Palliative Care at Duke-NUS. The Centre’s twin mission focuses on research and education to improve end-of-life care. Beyond publishing research pap...

Scientists from Duke-NUS and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) found that 2003 SARS survivors who have been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine produced highly potent functional antibodies that are capable of neutralising not only all known SARS-CoV-2. To discover more scientific insights and personal stories from Singapore with impact on the world, go to: www.duke-nu...

In this episode of MEDICUS – the Podcast, we hear from three intrepid virus hunters from Duke-NUS Medical School who travel around the region to study what viruses lurk in bats and small mammals and could just possibly become the next pandemic.  You can also read more about their work in MEDICUS 2021 Issue 4 . Subscribe to MEDICUS to never miss another podcast and read our award-winning stories at...