Last week began with the chance to welcome the Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts to Rothamsted Research, with discussions focusing on the productivity of both food and non-food crops. The productivity gains in e.g. willow production are already themselves increasing markedly as a result of the ‘appliance of science’ to breeding and agronomy.

We had a lengthy meeting of Council, the first day of which involved some major decisions regarding the funding of the Institutes that receive strategic support from BBSRC. Subject to some further work, these outcomes are likely to be announced in the next week or two.

I attended a superb talk by Sir Greg Winter, run by the Foundation for Science and Technology,  that covered the history of his production and commercialisation (via Cambridge Antibody Technology, now MedImmune) of humanised monoclonal antibodies. It was notable that 6 of the top ten selling drugs (generating $5-10Bn per year) are humanised antibodies – a huge success for a British technology.
Continue reading: Rothamsted, Council, ELC and the bioeconomy

Last week began with a visit to discuss Life Sciences and related topics at the University of Warwick, which also included discussions of horticulture, as part of the Warwick Crop Centre. Horticulture is a somewhat unheralded UK success story, in that it has had little investment, is rather profitable, and its products are widely recognised as having considerable health benefits. The application of modern biology to understanding and improving horticultural crops can only assist this continuing process.

Horticulture is thus an important Bioindustry, and I had an interesting session at the BioIndustry Association as part of their Parliament Day, where our discussions focussed on the best ways to capture the value for the biotechnology sector from the enormous amounts of knowledge and expertise in Higher Education and Research Institutes.
Continue reading: Warwick, BioIndustry, JISC and outreach

My first external visit of the week was to York, where I had discussions with the National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC) and the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products. These have both been well ahead of the curve in recognising the need to integrate the plant-based fixation of carbon and its conversion, extraction and processing into high(er) value products besides foodstuffs and feed. Many issues remain in terms of rolling out the Knowledge Based BioEconomy on a large scale, but it is necessary to have things to roll out in the first place!

We had a very useful meeting of the Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum, including Minister for Business and Enterprise Mark Prisk. The number of examples of a move to sustainable, biologically based chemicals production is growing apace. Readers may be interested in the Forum’s autumn newsletter, as well as a paper by NESTA on Financing Industrial Biotechnology in the UK. It would seem that Finance for Industrial Biotechnology is something that is mainly likely to come not from the Venture Capital sector but more from large corporates within the relevant sectors.
Continue reading: Non-food crops, industrial biotechnology and IAH

Last week involved a couple of round tables hosted by Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts,  the first on collaborations with China and the second on e-infrastructure (a topic that is a regular feature of this blog). Both are very important topics. BBSRC has long enabled collaborations with China through a number of schemes, such as the International Scientific Interchange Scheme and China Partnering Awards scheme. I myself was awarded one of the latter in 2004, and a number of papers, such as one on particle swarm optimization ensued. There is no doubt, that with a population some 23 times that of the UK, a buoyant economy and a large cadre of numerate scientists, China is likely to be a very important partner for the UK.
Continue reading: Science, tachyons, China and e-infrastructure

Last week was a truncated post-Bank Holiday week, mainly with internal meetings. One of these involved a very useful visit to JBOS, the (BBSRC-hosted) Joint Building and Office Services looks after both the physical structure of Polaris House in Swindon as well as many common services such as the switchboard, the Post Room (> 7000 items per day…), catering and the like. It is often easy to forget such infrastructures (except when things don’t work), and so it was nice to meet the folk who look after us in this way.

We had another meeting of the ‘Pharmaceutical Forum’, a group that brings the Chief Executives of BBSRC, EPSRC and MRC together with senior representatives of the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Continue reading: JBOS, e-infrastructure and pharmaceuticals