Singapore's push into stem-cell research has been boosted by $3 million in funding for seven projects here.

The researchers involved come from universities, hospitals or research institutes. They work in areas ranging from controlling how stem cells transform in the zebrafish to coaxing them to become insulin-secreting cells.

Now, funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*Star) Biomedical Research Council, their work could one day change the lives of people suffering from diabetes and neural disorders.

Take the group headed by Nanyang Technological University's Associate Professor Peter Droge, which is working on how to genetically modify human embryonic stem cells to make them safe for treatments.

Embryonic stem cells are unprogrammed cells that can turn into any body cell, so they have the potential to treat many illnesses.

In gene therapy, the corrected gene is generally placed into the body's genetic make-up in a random way. That could lead to defects like cancer.

'What we're trying to do is to develop a method to integrate a gene into a specific part of the body's genetic code, so the proper function is generated,' he explained.

Some scientists have earmarked diabetes as one of the first diseases to be tackled by stem-cell therapy, through transforming stem cells into made-in-the-lab islet cells.

Islet cells, found in the pancreas, make the insulin that the body needs to use glucose sugar as energy. Diabetic patients either cannot produce enough of them, or their cells do not work the way they should.

Convinced that Singapore had taken the lead in stem-cell research, the foundation pledged last year to pump millions into such research here, its first large-scale collaboration in Asia.

It signed an agreement with the research council to pump $5.2 million, with each organisation contributing half the amount.

'We are hopeful that the seven research projects chosen will contribute to the understanding and management of diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease,' said Associate Professor Kong Hwai Loong, the council's executive director.

Projects will be awarded between $200,000 and $700,000.

One of them is headed by Dr Philippe Taupin, who runs his own laboratory at the National Neuroscience Institute.

He discovered a protein molecule that lets an undifferentiated brain cell act like a stem cell in a culture dish - a world first.

His work involves identifying markers which can sort out stem cells from the other cells in the brain, and to identify the potential and uses of these cells.

Such research could one day help people who have suffered brain damage from injury or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's patients.

Not all the funding is for stem-cell research.

Rather than using stem cells to treat diabetes, a team headed by Dr Kon Oi Lian, the National Cancer Centre's director of medical sciences, is working on making a diabetic person's liver cells produce the insulin that the faulty pancreas cannot.

Liver cells don't normally produce insulin.