Urgent action is needed if the UK is to reap the benefits of engineering biology, according to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee which is calling for a “national sector champion” to be appointed to coordinate activity across government.
Setting out its concerns - and some potential solutions - the group said: “The UK is at risk, once again, of seeing the economic benefits of science and technology developed here but exploited overseas.” Their report Don’t fail to scale: seizing the opportunity of engineering biology, is result of an inquiry carried out during 2024 by the committee and cites concerns that companies in the area of engineering biology are being created in the UK but moving elsewhere as they begin to grow. This, the report says, reflects a wider issue for the UK’s economic growth.
“Our inquiry found that engineering biology was often an illustrative case study of wider issues across the UK economy. This failure to scale in the UK is a long-standing issue across many sectors of technology which requires an urgent concerted, cross governmental approach to fix,” said Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chair of the Lords Science and Technology Committee.
The report calls for action in seven key areas, these being: strategy, skills, regulation, infrastructure, investment, adoption and governance. The report sets out several actions the government should take. These actions include:
Strategy: the report said the Government needs a plan for engineering biology as part of its Industrial Strategy. It should, as a minimum, recommit to the previous Government’s £2 billion funding target over ten years to maintain the UK’s R&D sector.
Skills: it said the UK needs an expanded training offer and more effective visa policies to attract top talent from abroad. UKRI should fund more doctoral training programmes for engineering biology, incorporating a year in industry, including start-ups and spinouts, and there is a gap for Masters’ level graduate conversion courses, it said.
Regulation: The UK needs a swift and clear regulatory landscape to help drive responsible innovation: the creation
of the Regulatory Innovation Office is a good step it said.
Infrastructure: The UK has some useful infrastructure, especially at the early stages, but its use is limited by lack of awareness, and prohibitive access costs. Core, stable funding for laboratories would prevent them
from charging high prices for access or relying on inconsistent grant funding, the peers said.
Investment: Both public and private investment are needed. The UK’s public investment offer suffers from a pipeline problem—Innovate UK and research councils can provide early-stage funding, but it is unclear where to go for scale-up funding, the report warned.
Adoption: Sector-specific Government incentives or mandates are required to support the adoption of bio-based processes and help with market creation.
Governance: The UK must work with international partners, to ensure that malicious uses of engineering biology are prevented, and to ensure that the nation is protected against biological threats, whether engineered or natural.
The report notes that the UK’s global lead in engineering biology is in jeopardy, and calls for engineering biology to be part of the upcoming industrial strategy:
“The Government needs a plan for engineering biology as part of its Industrial Strategy. It should, as a minimum, recommit to the previous Government’s £2 billion funding target over ten years to maintain the UK’s R&D sector. The plan will require concrete outcomes and targets, regular progress updates against these metrics, and coordinated work across Government. It should identify how novel cross-sectoral technologies like engineering biology can be supported to deliver the wider goals of the industrial strategy such as sustainability and economic growth,” it said.
“Britain is a world leader in scientific innovation, with a heritage that is the envy of the world. But all too frequently we are crashing into walls rather than smashing through ceilings. Pioneering companies urgently need to scale-up to become globally competitive, not get stuck in the investment ‘valley of death.’” Baroness Brown added.
Referencing Lord Patrick Vallance, the UK's minister for science research and innovation, the Committee noted that the opportunity to build on and realise the benefits of engineering biology in the UK was “a small – and closing - window of opportunity.”
Further reading:
• Engineering biology projects get funding boost to drive growth
• Engineering biology doing "incredibly well" but more help needed
• UK government backs engineering biology
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