The UK is doing "incredibly well" in engineering biology but more help is needed to help companies scale up, including unlocking private sector investment and new regulatory approaches.
Giving evidence at a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee hearing on engineering biology, Lord Patrick Vallance, the UK's minister for science research and innovation said: "If you look at the fundamental science in engineering biology, we are doing incredibly well."
Vallance told the committee: "This is now reaching a stage where this is very real and is beginning to turn into the true idea of being able to programme biology to do all sorts of things." He said engineering biology is very advanced in some areas - such as medicine, and cell and gene therapies - but there was a need to put in place the foundations for growth in the use of engineering biology in other areas.
Engineering biology is the application of bioscience - harnessing the mechanisms of biological systems in cells and organisms to solve some of the key scientific challenges facing society.
But he warned that the window of opportunity to scale up the technologies and processes in the UK was limited, so investment was essential.
For example, techniques such as using cells to capture carbon dioxide to create a slurry, which can then be used to make concrete are at an early stage, but the needs in this area are very different from the needs of those in medicine. “We have a range of activities, each of which requires something a bit different. We need to fund the appropriate science through things like the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the various centres that have been created with the £100 million that went into engineering biology areas,” Vallance told the hearing.
But responding to Viscount Stansgate on the issue of the UK missing out on the benefits of engineering biology due to the inability to scale up at speed, Vallance said: “As you know, [scale up issues] have been true for a lot of areas over the past 50 years, probably. We cannot afford to do that again. It is why the letter I wrote to the Prime Minister in my previous role, on behalf of the Council for Science and Technology said that ‘there is a window of opportunity’ to get this right. It is a relatively small window.”
Vallance added: “It is really important that the capital side of this is recognised. As you know, we lose a lot of companies in investment rounds of more than £200 million, as they go overseas. That is why the pension reforms are a critical part of this.”
Baroness Neville-Jones said that people working in engineering biology had two issues. One was not being able to afford the infrastructure and the second was that the regulatory scene was very disorganised and disparate and did not have much shape. "That was beginning to become a problem, because, in its absence, it was difficult to create the notion of the industry and links between the various parts," she said.
Responding to a question from Baroness Neville-Jones on the issue of attracting overseas talent Vallance said the global talent visa numbers increased from 7,000 in 2023 to 8,000 in 2024 and said: "As you can imagine I have been very clear that this is an important thing to get right. I have had discussions with the Home Office, and others, and the Migration Advisory Committee is looking into the skills needs in different sectors and will continue to provide advice to the Home Office.”
Addressing the issue of the UK’s ‘risk-averse culture’ when contrasted with, for example, the US, Vallance said: “The Procurement Act will make it more possible to take that risk […] We have to get that risk appetite right, which is precisely what is behind some of the new things that have already been announced, and the intention of, the [new] Industrial Strategy.
Earlier this year the government announced the establishment of the Engineering Biology Steering Group which is chaired by Vallance and includes representatives from businesses, academia, intellectual property and investment.
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