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

My first external engagement last week was at a breakfast discussion organised by BP Biofuels around the issues of the economics, sustainability and utility of various kinds of biofuels, especially those based on the starch component of feed wheat (with the protein concentrate being used for animal feed). Chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby, It featured contributions from Dave Richards, Managing Director of Vivergo fuels, Jeremy Tomkinson of the National Non-foods Crop Centre, Peter Kendall – recently re-elected as President of the NFU, and Jonathon Porritt of Forum for the Future. There was much consensus that while electric vehicles may take over in time, liquid biofuels were going to be more important for a good while. (I do not understand why vehicles that use fuel cells to transform liquid fuels rather than dihydrogen to electricity are not discussed more, as these combine the high energy density of liquid fuels such as ethanol with the environmental benefits of electricity.) There was also considerable recognition that we need to be able to agree much more carefully how we assess the true sustainability of a bioprocess; indeed I see the research needs underpinning a transition to true sustainability being an important theme for BBSRC science and scientists as we move more fully to a BioEconomy. For these kinds of biofuels (but more generally), this would require good process data being made publicly available. The enormous Vivergo plant near Hull will certainly operate at considerable scale, with planned production of 420 million litres of bioethanol per year. Truly things have moved apace since the BBSRC Review on Bioenergy (PDF) that I chaired in 2006 and the UK is already well placed for making a major contribution to its sustainability in biofuels.
Continue reading: Biofuels, sustainability, open access and INRA

As with any organisation or system, its effective functioning requires much internal (as well as external) communication between and within our groups. Thus, most of my meetings last week were ‘internal’, including meetings of our Finance Group (that also includes things like Estates) and our Corporate Policy and Strategy Group. In addition, BBSRC is ‘home’ to the Research Councils Internal Audit Service (RCIAS) that – as you would suppose – provides internal audit and assurance services to the Research Councils and other bodies, and I had one of my regular meetings with its Director.

We also have interactions with many external organisations, and – related to a joint call in Synthetic Biology – we are hosting an official from the Defence Science and Technology Lab (DSTL), with whom I had a scientifically very interesting discussion.
Continue reading: Finance, assurance, policy and DSTL

The first external visit of the week was to Unilever’s research laboratory at Port Sunlight. As a company with interests in food, health and healthcare, and with a published intention to move towards full sustainability of its value chain by 2020, it was not surprising to see that their strategic interests map closely onto our own.

We had a useful meeting on the Norwich Research Park with the Directors and Directors of operations of our strategically funded Institutes, including updates on campus developments, plans for sharing facilities and much else.

We also had one of our regular meetings with the Technology Strategy Board. Although there is very frequent and considerable coworking at every level, these meetings, as for those with the Institutes, serve as effective fora to exchange thoughts and knowledge of our activities and strategies.
Continue reading: Unilever, Institutes, TSB and Foo

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