Engineering Biology (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Tarassenko Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, on her excellent report. I would not say that it is too long; rather, it is very comprehensive. However, I was surprised that the only research institute mentioned in it was the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich. At another institute not too far away, there is another example of world-leading research: the ground-breaking work in synthetic biology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

As we all know, all living things are built from proteins created from the same 20 amino acids. Work at the LMB has shown that, by reprogramming the genetic code, it is possible to incorporate non-natural amino acids into proteins, thereby enabling the creation of new classes of enzymes, drugs and biomaterials—for example, polymers that can be programmed to be biodegradable.

As has been pointed out several times in this debate, the UK was a world leader in synthetic biology 10 years ago, following major investment from UKRI since 2007. The report indicates that the UK’s position at the forefront of the field has slipped. One view is that the ratio of outputs to the level of funding for synthetic biology has been disappointing in the last decade compared to other areas of research excellence in the UK.

An alternative view, which is more my view, is that the field has expanded, and engineering biology, a description that started to be used only in the late 2010s—I hope not a Windscale-to-Sellafield moment—reflects the maturation of synthetic biology and its integration with other fields, such as machine learning and advanced manufacturing. As a result, the level of funding needed a substantial increase just to cope with the expansion of the field.

I believe that the rewards of a multidisciplinary approach to engineering biology will be great. To optimise the design of a new enzyme or protein, thousands of variants will need to be tested. Machine learning, which, as we all know, is a strength in the UK, can be used to predict which variants should be tried first, analyse experimental results in real time and suggest the next experiment, a process known as active learning. To reassure my noble friend on my right, a good proportion of the PhDs in the AI CDTs will be for the applications of machine learning, for example, developing active learning techniques for engineering biology.

As the report states, and my noble friend Lord Mair made the point very eloquently, engineering biology is an illustrative case study of wider issues across the UK economy. The Government’s willingness to set 10-year budgets for some R&D activities is welcome but should be accompanied by funding nimbleness. Excellence in generating valuable and novel outputs should indeed be rewarded with follow-on funding, but at the same time we should not be afraid to close down unproductive lines of inquiry. This balanced strategy happens much more readily in research institutes, which is why I mentioned them at the beginning.

Beyond academic research, the early stages of the translational pipeline are mostly working. The number of university spin-outs is growing year on year. Funding for series A and series B is generally available, but as a country we struggle with series C and beyond. This makes it very difficult for innovative British businesses to scale and remain in the UK.

Market access is a further issue in a global economy, and our US and Chinese competitors benefit from huge domestic markets. The creation of the National Wealth Fund and the launch of the British Growth Partnership are positive developments that will help UK companies to access the capital they need to scale, but it is fair to say that we are in a holding pattern as we await the publication of the final report of the pensions investment review, the unveiling of the industrial strategy and the outcome of the spending review, all in the next few weeks.

No doubt we will return, as has been promised by my noble friend Lord Mair, to the general issue of how to ensure that we do not fail to scale, if only in the debate on the recent report from the Communications and Digital Committee on the scaling up, this time, of AI and creative technologies. However, I am sure that I speak for everyone when I say that we hope that the path and means to scale up in the eight sectors of the Government’s industrial strategy will become clearer by the end of June.