Funding for six new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Engineering Biology Mission Hubs and 22 Mission Award projects, was announced today by Andrew Griffith, Minister for Science, Research and Innovation.
Engineering biology has enormous potential to address global challenges, drive economic growth, and increase national security, resilience and preparedness. These mission hubs and awards projects will play a key role in achieving the goals of government’s national vision for engineering biology that was announced in December 2023.
Involving multiple academic and industrial partners
The hubs will each receive up to £12 million from the UKRI Technology Missions Fund and UKRI and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s (BBSRC) core budgets. They will be funded for five years, be based across the country, and involve multiple academic and industrial partners.
The successful hubs will be led by:
- Cranfield University
- Imperial College London
- The University of Edinburgh
- University of Kent
- University of Nottingham
- University of Portsmouth
This week minister Griffith visited the new GlycoCell Hub based at the University of Nottingham. He visited the hub to understand how it is helping to exploit engineering biology to produce new vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, by industrialising the bio-manufacture of sugar biomolecules crucial to their development.
This hub aims to deliver a platform that will be central to UK epidemic preparedness.
Power to transform our health and environment
Announcing the funding the Science, Research and Innovation Minister, Andrew Griffith, said:
Engineering biology has the power to transform our health and environment, from developing life-saving medicines to protecting our environment and food supply and beyond.
Our latest £100m investment through the UKRI Technology Missions Fund will unlock projects as diverse as developing vaccines, as I saw in Nottingham this week, preventing food waste through disease resistant crops, reducing plastic pollution, and even driving efforts to treat snakebites.
With new Hubs and Mission Awards spread across the country, from Edinburgh to Portsmouth, we are supporting ambitious researchers and innovators around the UK in pioneering groundbreaking new solutions which can transform how we live our lives, while growing our economy.
The hubs will be complemented by a series of mission awards that will fund projects for two years and receive a share of £30 million funding. The awards aim to create an expansion of engineering biology disciplines and communities, building on existing UK strengths and emerging opportunities.
Tackling major global challenges
Dr Amanda Collis, UKRI Technology Mission Director for Engineering Biology and interim Deputy Executive Chair of BBSRC said:
UKRI is investing £100 million to unlock the potential of Engineering Biology across a broad range of applications, tackling major global challenges and stimulating economic growth.
This investment builds upon the UK’s significant strengths in Engineering Biology. The Hubs and Mission Awards will support collaboration between disciplines, with business, and across the regions and nations of the UK, as well as enable partnership with other countries. Together they make an important contribution towards realizing the ambitions set out in the UK Government’s National Vision for Engineering Biology.
Potential to change many aspects of our lives
Dr Kedar Pandya, UKRI Technology Missions Fund Senior Responsible Owner and Executive Director of Cross-Council Programmes at UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council said:
Engineering Biology is one of the critical technologies for the UK strength and opportunity identified in the Innovation Strategy. It has the potential to change many aspects of our lives, from how we grow our food, to developing new medical treatments, and on through to clean growth that will develop more environmentally sustainable manufacturing processes and supply chains, as well improved diagnosis of, and cures for, environmental issues.
These new Hubs and Missions projects will enhance the UK’s already strong pedigree in the field and bring societal and economic benefits to the country. UKRI is investing £320 million in Technology Missions to enable new and existing capabilities and capacity in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, engineering biology and future telecommunications in the years 2023-2025 and beyond.
Further information
UKRI Technology Missions Fund
The fund is designed to exploit the UK’s global leadership in transformative technologies to help solve specific problems, while also helping cement that leading position.
Overall, UKRI is investing £250 million in technology missions to enable new and existing capabilities and capacity in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and engineering biology in the years 2023 to 2025 and beyond. With a further £70 million announced to support future telecommunications.
National vision for engineering biology
The national vision for engineering biology published in December 2023 defines the UK government’s collective ambition for engineering biology. It also sets the direction in which government investment, policy and regulatory reform will deliver through the strands of the Science and Technology Framework.
Mission hubs
Environmental Biotechnology Innovation Centre
Lead principal investigator: Frederic Coulon, Cranfield University
Mission area theme: environmental solutions
Engineering Biology Hub for Microbial Foods
Lead principal investigator: Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro, Imperial College London
Mission area theme: food systems
Engineered Genetic Control Systems for Advanced Therapeutics
Lead principal investigator: Susan Rosser, The University of Edinburgh
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Engineering Biology Hub for environmental processing and recovery of metals; from contaminated land to industrial biotechnology in a circular economy
Lead principal investigator: Martin Warren, University of Kent
Mission area theme: clean growth and environmental solutions
GlycoCell Engineering Biology Mission Hub: Transforming glycan biomanufacture for health
Lead principal investigator: John Heap, University of Nottingham
Mission area theme: biomedical and food systems
Preventing Plastic Pollution with Engineering Biology (P3EB) Mission Hub
Lead principal investigator: Andrew Pickford, University of Portsmouth
Mission area theme: environmental solutions and clean growth
Mission awards
ALMOND: agriculture living machine of operational nano droplets
Lead principal investigator: Oliver Castell, Cardiff University
Mission area theme: food systems
Engineering gene regulatory networks to design disease-resistant crops
Lead principal investigator: Nicola Joan Patron, Earlham Institute
Mission area theme: food systems
Sustainable style for clean growth: innovating textile production through engineering biology
Lead principal investigator: Thomas Ellis, Imperial College London
Mission area theme: clean growth
EBioAct: Environmentally sustainable production of bioactive triterpenes
Lead principal investigator: Anne Osbourn, John Innes Centre
Mission area theme: clean growth
Engineering of extracellular vesicles for oral delivery of nucleic acid therapies
Lead principal investigator: Driton Vllasaliu, King’s College London
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Applying synthetic biology to the development of in vivo technologies for the monitoring and control of vector-borne diseases
Lead principal investigator: Tony Nolan, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Scalable production of precisely engineered proteins using an expanded genetic code
Lead principal investigator: Anthony Green, The University of Manchester
Mission area theme: clean growth
Engineering biology for critical metal recovery from industrial wastestreams
Lead principal investigator: Jonathan Lloyd, The University of Manchester
Mission area theme: environmental solutions
SafePhage: engineering synthetic phages with intrinsic biocontainment
Principal investigator: Michael Brockhurst, The University of Manchester
Mission area theme: clean growth
A powerful directed-evolution tool for exploitation of chloroplast engineering biology
Principal investigator: Saul Purton, University College London
Mission area theme: clean growth
Haemotoxic and cytotoxic snake venom metalloproteinases – production, enzymatic specificity, snakebite treatment, and biomedical use
Principal investigator: Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel, University of Bristol
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Cyanobacteria engineering for restoring environments (CYBER)
Principal investigator: Thomas Gorochowski, University of Bristol
Mission area theme: environmental solutions
OpenBioMAPS: shared tools for accelerating UK bio-manufacturing
Principal investigator: James Haseloff, University of Cambridge
Mission area theme: clean growth
Engineering semi-artificial cells for new-to-nature photosynthesis
Principal investigator: Jenny Zhang, University of Cambridge
Mission area theme: clean growth
MAST, modular activator and silencer therapeutics
Principal investigator: Laura Itzhaki, University of Cambridge
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Synthetically engineered microalgae for improved gut function and human health
Principal investigator: Ian Watson, University of Glasgow
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Evaluation and optimisation of new engineered human apoferritins: protein nanocages for targeted drug delivery and intracellular cargo release
Principal investigator: Neil Thomas, University of Nottingham
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Towards sustainable cultured meat production by developing a novel biocatalyst
Principal investigator: Hua Ye, University of Oxford
Mission area theme: food systems
Electrospun mucoadhesive matrices for polymersome-mediated mRNA vaccine delivery
Principal investigator: Helen Colley, The University of Sheffield
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Engineering Streptomyces bacteria for the sustainable manufacture of antibiotics
Principal investigator: Paul Hoskisson, University of Strathclyde
Mission area theme: clean growth
Optimal cell factories for membrane protein production
Principal investigator: Alexander Darlington, University of Warwick
Mission area theme: biomedicine
Engineering insects for novel food or feed and waste management
Principal investigator: Luke Alphey, University of York
Mission area theme: food systems
Top image: Science, Research and Innovation Minister Andrew Griffith visiting the new GlycoCell Hub. Credit: University of Nottingham