Scottish Enterprise: Boost for biotech

Karen Harries-rees

17-Oct-2014

Several initiatives are underway to promote industrial biotechnology in Scotland and increase its commercial adoption in high-value areas

Industrial biotechnology (IB) has the potential to transform many of Scotland’s key sectors, by delivering new innovation, inward investment and export opportunities, and by contributing to Scotland’s transition to a low-carbon economy.

 

 Industrial biotechnology is set to play a major role

Copyright: Rex Features

The National Plan for Industrial Biotechnology, launched in November 2013, aims to transform the competitiveness and sustainability of industries in Scotland by developing and applying IB within an emerging bioeconomy.

Scotland has many of the building blocks it needs to develop a bioeconomy, including a strong reputation in academic research, industry leading companies with operations in Scotland, and abundant natural resources.

However, it also faces a number of challenges including a low level of IB take-up by companies and low levels of industry investment in R&D. It needs to overcome resistance among businesses to adopt new technologies and redress the lack of testing and scale-up facilities.

The plan aims to increase IB turnover from £189m (€240m) in 2013 to £900m by 2025, equivalent to a gross value-added contribution of £250m, and boost the number of employees in the sector from 1,103 to more than 2,500.

Developed by a working group of Chemical Sciences Scotland, designated the Scottish Industrial Biotechnology Development Group, the plan will be delivered through four key themes:

  • Industry engagement – to help increase awareness and uptake of IB technologies
  • Biorefinery/biochemical facility – to scope out the potential to make this a reality
  • Skills – to help address any skills shortages or barriers to developing IB
  • Networks of innovation centres – to position Scotland as a leading hub for IB innovation with a network of collaborative innovation centres.

ADOPTION TARGETS

 

 Skilled researchers are a key asset

Copyright: Rex Features

The level of adoption of IB by the Scottish industry today is relatively low, with 43 companies using IB and contributing a combined turnover of £189m, just 4.7% of the UK’s £4bn overall IB turnover. The goal is to increase this to 200 companies by 2025, with an interim of 50 companies by 2015.

“This might seem like a modest increase,” says Sarah Petrie, programme manager IB at Scottish Enterprise, “but IB can be difficult technology to apply on a commercial basis. We need to lower the barriers to companies wanting to use the technology. We are well on our way and we’re confident we’ll hit that target.”

Scottish Enterprise is working with companies to try to raise awareness of what IB is and what it can do for business. “For example, we have a team of innovation specialists who can provide support with R&D activity,” says Petrie.

The development of a biorefinery/biochemical facility is a longer-term goal but work is already underway on a roadmap, to be launched later this year. The roadmap looks at the feedstock landscape in terms of its sustainability and competitiveness and what Scotland could produce based on those feedstocks.

Skills Investment Plans are being developed by Skills Development Scotland for chemical and life sciences. The plans explore the demand-side issues relating to skills gaps and shortages, as well as wider issues affecting the sector now and in the future. From this work, the most important priorities will be taken forward into sector action plans.

However, the main success so far, says Petrie, is the launch of the first innovation centre – the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC). Other innovation centres in areas such as synthetic biology and process development are also being investigated.

In January this year, IBioIC launched with £10m funding from the Scottish Funding Council and three founding members – GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), INEOS, and Ingenza – with 13 Higher Education Institutes as partners. It is a national facility for the application of biological resources, systems and processes to produce chemicals, materials and energy.

Its vision is to be a world-leading innovation centre that will accelerate and de-risk the development of commercially viable, sustainable solutions for high-value manufacturing in chemistry using and life science sectors. It aims to support the development of new products and manufacturing processes, provide the necessary skills to meet industry needs and to be a centre of knowledge exchange for sharing best practices in IB.

REVENUE TARGET

 

 Scotland has biotech expertise

Copyright: Rex Features

The centre aims to surpass the revenue target set in the national plan by generating £1.0bn-1.5bn of gross value-added contribution annually to the Scottish economy by 2030, which represents a growth of revenue to between £2bn and £3bn.

One of the challenges is that Scotland has a strong academic research base, but relatively low levels of R&D in the industry. To help address this, IBioIC is industry led and will use technology and innovation from academia to drive forward solutions to industrial problems and for business needs.

The centre will facilitate collaborations across all types of businesses – from start-ups to global multinationals, with a particular focus on SMEs. This will include those companies in Scotland that are already using IB, while also using the academic research abilities to attract new companies. “We aim to introduce industrial members to our academic capabilities in Scotland to generate projects and work that generate economic benefit to Scotland,” Kilburn says.

It has been actively growing its membership base since the launch and already has more than 25 companies which use, or plan to use, IB in their business and which have made a financial contribution to IBioIC. The goal is to expand the industrial cluster to 200 companies across the full spectrum of chemical and life sciences, globally and into other sectors such as food and drink, and forestry.

IBioIC will focus on the chemical and chemical-using industries, rather than the less commercially advanced applications in stratified medicine, diagnostics and personalised therapy in order to generate value faster. The industry members have identified five key themes for IBioIC’s activities: sustainable feedstocks, biotransformations and biocatalysis, cell factory construction, downstream processing and integrated bioprocessing.

The first three research projects, the result of a competition run earlier in the year, start in September. One is a project led by GlycoMar, a Scottish biotechnology company, to use a microalga, a single-celled species found in sea water, to produce an active ingredient for the cosmetic sector. A second competition will yield a further five or six projects that will start in 2015.

To address the skills shortage, a collaborative MSc started in September involving initially 17 students, teaching from nine Scottish universities and a minimum four-month project with an industrial partner. In addition, nine PhD programmes have also been launched.

NEW BIOPROCESSING CENTRES
The lack of testing and scale-up facilities has also hampered the adoption of IB in Scotland. This will, in part, be addressed by the development of two new bioprocessing centres, the Rapid Bioprocess Prototyping Centre and the Flexible Downstream Bioprocessing centre, to be opened over the next year.

IBioIC has raised a total of £2.7m to establish the centres – £1.8m from the Scottish Funding Council and an additional £0.9m from the University of Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt University, which will each host a centre.

“These centres will help but they’re not the entire solution. Once they’re up and running, they’ll give IBioIC a good foothold to build on,” says Petrie.

The Rapid Bioprocess Prototyping Centre will be based at the University of Strathclyde and will provide a facility for companies and academics to quickly test new cell lines, bio-products or novel approaches to bioprocessing, for their industrial potential. The centre is due to open by the end of the year.

The industrially attractive new cell lines and bio-products can then feed into the Flexible Downstream Bioprocessing Centre, based at Heriot-Watt University, to be turned into full-scale manufacturing processes. This centre will start opening in mid-2015.

Kilburn says: “These centres will be important to support the £30m research programme planned by IBioIC over the next five years. They will provide opportunities for Scotland to increase its competitiveness in developing novel and economically viable bioprocesses to manufacture a range of both commodity and speciality chemicals.”


PROCESS INNOVATION

PHARMA PRODUCTION TO BE TRANSFORMED
The Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation (CMAC) has a long-term vision to transform pharmaceutical manufacturing to produce higher-quality pharmaceutical and specialty chemical materials at a lower cost, more quickly and more sustainably. It aims to achieve this by accelerating the adoption of continuous manufacturing and crystallisation processes, systems and manufacturing plants.

The centre, with core funding through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), was established in 2011 with three founding industrial members – AstraZeneca, GSK and Novartis. Its physical hub is at the University of Strathclyde, with Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Loughborough and Bath universities contributing to the multi-disciplinary academic team. “It’s recognised by stakeholders as a world-leading manufacturing research centre,” says Craig Johnston, operations director of CMAC.

By creating a world-class partnership between industry, academia and public bodies, the centre aims to deliver new manufacturing technologies and the skilled workforce that the industry will need. “It will attract inward investment, new jobs and wealth,” says Johnston.

In February 2015, the centre will expand into the new Technology and Innovation Centre at the University of Strathclyde. Funding of £34m through the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund, and industry and charity contributions, is enabling CMAC to establish a world-class research facility equipped with a comprehensive suite of continuous processing, process analysis and characterisation equipment.

The centre is looking at the feasibility of setting up a demonstrator facility. It is also working with SMEs and a range of organisations, including Cogent, the strategic skills body for the science industries, to build a talent pipeline of graduates and postgraduates.

The Scottish Funding Council has fully funded 20 places for a new MSC in Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing starting in September.


LIFE SCIENCES

SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION A PRIMARY FACTOR

Manufacturing is going to be a key part of meeting Scotland’s target to raise exports of chemical sciences manufactured products by 50% by 2020 and increase life sciences turnover by 100% by 2020.

“Scotland wants to support and increase the manufacturing base that we’ve got but also attract new manufacturing,” says Caroline Strain, head of chemical sciences at Scottish Enterprise.

“We want sustainable manufacturing. We’re working to ensure that unit costs and energy costs are competitive and to support the sector in its aim to be as resource efficient as it can,” she says.

“A lot of individual pieces of the jigsaw have to come together,” says Strain. Two key areas will be industrial biotechnology and promoting Grangemouth and the Irvine enterprise area as locations to attract investment through co-location.

Other issues that are being explored are the need for demonstration and scale-up facilities, the development of supply chains to attract more companies, increasing international trade and accessing EU funding for companies to develop manufacturing in Scotland.

Scotland is a very attractive place to manufacture, says Dave Tudor, vice president – primary supply chain, GSK. “The first thing that companies look at is the taxation position in the country and the next thing is the skills on offer. Judged on these, Scotland has a very strong offering,” he says.

The UK has a lower rate of corporation tax on profits generated from UK-owned intellectual property, the “patent box”, to encourage investment in R&D and manufacturing in the UK.

The combination of sector-support initiatives, low taxation, academic excellence, skills and infrastructure investment make Scotland an ideal location for sustainable manufacturing operations.


SCOTTISH AQUACULTURE INNOVATION CENTRE

SOLUTIONS SOUGHT FOR FISH AND ANIMAL HEALTH

Scotland is one of the largest producers of farmed salmon, after Norway and Chile. It produces about 130,000 tonnes/year. Including shellfish and trout, the industry employs more than 4,500 people and turnover is around £350m (€445m).

The Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) has been launched to grow the industry. It will bring together the industry and research to provide innovative solutions focusing on areas such as fish and shellfish health and welfare; feeding, quality and nutrition; breeding and stock improvement and engineering to contribute towards increased production of clean, safe and sustainable food.

The centre, funded by the Scottish Funding Council in partnership with Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, launched in June 2014 and involves 26 aquaculture companies and 13 research organisations.

The centre’s work will help to make the industry more sustainable, says Chris Corden, senior executive – life science industry team, Scottish Enterprise. “For example, we hope to replace 30-40% of the fish meal in feed with alternatives, such as algae,” says Corden.

Scotland also sees an opportunity to use its expertise in animal health to address the increasing need for protein, quite a lot of which will need to come from animal protein.

“We already have in place probably the highest-rated animal research facilities, possibly globally but certainly in Europe,” says Corden. The focus will be on raising awareness in Scotland and building capacity in animal health “to make the best of what we’ve got and build on it,” says Corden.

Work will include research into areas such as improving animal nutrition and the welfare of livestock in Africa, as well as help for individual companies to develop more efficient processes.

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