Connecting Innovators

in Academia and Business

James Phillips

Senior Business Interaction Manager

20 November 2014

2

Supporting UK Research

3

Research Councils:

• Invest in excellent research

and people in the UK research

base

• Work to ensure that outputs

and outcomes from our

investments are used by

business, industry and other

users

• Engage with business, industry

and others to enable

involvement with research

Research base delivers:

• Knowledge: existing and new,

generic and specific

• Research infrastructure: data,

equipment, facilities

• National Research capabilities

• People in the research base, in

the economy and moving

between these

• Support for business initiation

and creation

RCUK Mission

4

BBSRC Strategic Plan 2010-2015

Three major research priorities

Food Security

Bioenergy & Industrial Biotechnology

Bioscience for Health

Exploiting new ways of working

KE, innovation & skills

Partnerships

Three crucial underpinning themes

5

New BBSRC responsive mode priority

area in Food, Nutrition and Health

6

Cross-Council working in Food, Nutrition and Health

• Identification that closer and more effective working across Research

Councils is needed to foster integrative and multidisciplinary research

• Cross-Council Steering Group to develop joint strategy document and

priority areas for co-ordinated working

Future Outcomes:

• BBSRC, MRC & ESRC joint statement of vision and direction of travel

in FNH research

• More detailed BBSRC-specific strategic document

• Developing BBSRC and cross-Council activities

Future Strategy

7

BBSRC working with businesses

Bioscience

Research Base Business

Strengthening and

developing BBSRC’s

links with bioscience

research users

Enabling the

bioscience research

base to respond to

industry challenges

Creating opportunities

for engagement

Supporting Collaboration with Industry

Research Industry Clubs

Skills and Knowledge Exchange

Strategic Collaboration Schemes

www.bbsrc.ac.uk/business

Collaborative Initiatives

9

Research Industry Clubs

Aims • Support high quality, innovative, pre-competitive research to underpin the

UK industry in addressing significant challenges to future competitiveness

• To strengthen the research community in the areas which underpin the

long-term needs of industry through interdisciplinary research and the

provision of training

• To ensure the exchange of knowledge between the science base and

industry through effective networking leading to impact from bioscience

research base

DRINC has now begun its second phase with a further

£10M. The Research Councils and Industry will continue

to work together to fund new research from 2013 - 2015.

• £3M to be allocated through a two stage process

• Outline applications accepted from: Spring 2015

• Funding from BBSRC and potentially ESRC, EPSRC and MRC

• Research proposals should be multidisciplinary and pre-competitive

Visit the ‘Apply for Funding’ page at: www.bbsrc.ac.uk/drinc

Contact: drinc@bbsrc.ac.uk

Improving our understanding of diet and health

Designing Foods to

maintain &

improve health

Understanding the

relationship between

processing & nutrition

Understanding food

choice to improve health

through diet

Diet and Health Research Industry Club

11

DRINC2: Company Members

12

New DRINC Projects

The first projects of DRINC2 started from June 2014 onwards:

• Ian Clark (UEA): Synergistic combinations of diet-derived bioactives to

maintain joint health and prevent osteoarthritis.

• Gary Frost (Imperial): Using crop genetics to understand the importance of

dietary resistant starches for maintaining healthy glucose homeostasis

• Peter Ellis (King’s College): Impact of food processing on the blood

cholesterol-lowering effect of cereal beta-glucan

• Peter Rogers (Bristol): Nudge150: Combining small changes to foods to

achieve a sustained decrease in energy intake

• Peter Shewry (Rothamsted): Speciation and bioavailability of iron in plant

foods

• Jeremy Spencer (Reading): Mechanistic assessment of the acute and

chronic cognitive effects of flavanol/anthocyanin intervention in humans

DRINC has supported 25

research projects

• 26 centres throughout the UK

• 300 strong research community:

– 110 investigators

– 62 PDRAs

– 30 PhD Students

• Engaging with over 100

industrial participants

• Representing the whole

food value chain

14

iStockPhoto © Thinkstock 2012

“As well as the cardiovascular benefits, we also have a prebiotic effect at amounts that are achievable through a moderate dietary intake of cocoa, apples, red

wine and green tea.” Prof. Jeremy Spencer, University of Reading

• Roasting delivers the distinctive aromas and

flavours associated with coffee and chocolate –

it also changes the chemical structure of

compounds within the beans themselves

• DRINC-funded researchers have investigated the

effects of processing on the bioactivity of

flavanols and their derivatives

• Professor Jeremy Spencer’s team at the

University of Reading have found that light

processing has minimal impact on the favourable

effects of cocoa flavanols on vascular function;

heavy processing seemed to abolish them

• They have also discovered the first evidence that

cocoa flavanols can have a prebiotic-like effect,

modifying the ecology of micro-organisms within

the colon in a positive way

The benefits in the bean

15

© User:Editor at Large / Wikimedia Commons /

CC-BY-SA-2.5

“Our data provide the first evidence that green tea catechins can

be taken up into the skin following oral intake in human

subjects and indicate their complex skin incorporation pattern”

• A multidisciplinary research team based at

the Universities of Manchester, Bradford and

Leeds has been investigating the effects of

dietary bioactive compounds on skin health

in humans in vivo.

• A human clinical study found evidence that

oral consumption of green tea catechin

compounds can protect against sunburn and

the longer-term effects of UV damage.

• Previous pre-clinical animal studies have

shown a protective effect of green tea

against cancers of many types.

Skin Health boost from

Green Tea

16

© Tim Gander

“We hope this research will lead to new ways to prevent and treat obesity either through modifying eating behaviours directly or by developing foods that encourage specific patterns of eating.” Prof. Jeff Brunstrom, Unversity of Bristol

• Decisions about portion size have a major influence on the number of calories we consume

• Researchers funded through the BBSRC-led Diet and Health Research Industry Club (DRINC) are investigating how our expectations of satiety (how filling a food is) might be learned over time

• Professor Jeff Brunstrom’s team at the University of Bristol has developed the ‘consumer expectation toolbox’ which has been used by industry to explore the expected satiety of products, and in a clinical setting to assess food reward and expected satiety before and after gastric surgery

• They are taking forward their findings as part of a new BBSRC-funded LINK project with Nestlé

Would you like to

supersize that?

17

© Tim Gander

“The DRINC study gave us the capacity to think in a big way about a project that had real scope and wasn’t limited to some smaller, rather tangible issue.” Prof. John Blundell, University of Leeds

• Funded by DRINC, Professor John Blundell’s team at the University of Leeds has developed a sophisticated research platform to identify the causes of overeating

• The study has produced findings and a degree of understanding that wouldn’t have been arrived at by looking at normal cause and effect relationships, such as the link between fat free body mass and appetite

• The team has also discovered that people respond in different ways and this has had a major effect on the way the team conducts research and interprets outcomes

• Their approach has generated interest from researchers across the globe, leading to invitations to join two EU FP7 consortia (full4health and SATIN – Satiety Innovation) which have a strong emphasis on interactions with industry

Overeating – it’s not one

size fits all

18

Crop Improvement Research Club

£7M to improve the productivity and quality of wheat,

barley and oil seed rape for use in food.

CIRC launched in 2011 as a partnership between BBSRC,

a consortium of 14 companies and the Scottish Government.

15 research projects are investigating:

• Improving crop productivity to sustainably increase the volume

of food the UK can produce, while limiting the land needed and

improving resource use efficiency

• Improving crop quality to help improve the processing, safety and

nutritional value of crop products whilst also improving resource use efficiency

Improving starch quality

in wheat

• Starch is a major component of cereal

grains and its functional properties have a

significant impact on grain utilisation. In

wheat, there are two types of starch

granules called A- and B-type.

• The smaller B-type starch granules have

negative impacts on many end-uses of

wheat and barley.

• This project builds on previous work in

which researchers identified a gene

controlling the content of B-type starch

granules in a wild relative of wheat. The goal

is to identify and manipulate the gene

responsible for the control of B-granule

content Bgc-1 in wheat and barley.

At the end of the project, grain

from improved lines will be

made available for end-user

trials, including bread and

baking trials, mashing and

alcohol-yield trials. Dr Kay Trafford, NIAB

Understanding bread

quality • Bread is an essential dietary staple, and makes

significant contributions to our daily intakes of

energy, protein, fibre, minerals and vitamins.

• The quality of bread is determined by gluten

strength and the stability of the bubbles formed

in the dough. Bubble-stability controls how

dough bubbles coalesce during baking, enabling

the fine texture typical of UK sliced bread.

• While we know how to influence dough strength

by breeding varieties of wheat containing

specific gluten proteins, currently the factors

affecting bubble-stability are poorly understood.

• Prof. Peter Shewry is investigating how

endogenous wheat lipids, which account for 2-

3% of flour, influence bubble-stability and will

generate new targets for plant breeders

producing wheat varieties for bread-making.

This project brings together a

unique combination of the skills

and facilities available at

Rothamsted Research and the

Institute of Food Research. Prof. Peter Shewry, Rothamsted Research

• A partnership between BBSRC, NERC and 13 Company members – launched Spring 2014.

• £10M to provide solutions to key challenges affecting the

efficiency, productivity and sustainability of UK crop and livestock sectors

• Structured around two interlinking themes:

1. Resilient and robust crop and livestock production systems

2. Predictive capability & modelling for new technologies, tools, products and services

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Innovation Club

22

£4M initiative funded by BBSRC, Defra and FSA to study Campylobacter in the

food chain, from field to plate.

The initiative funded 12 multidisciplinary projects, researching three areas:

• When does infection begin in poultry, what are the common points of

contamination, and are there stages in the process where control measures

are likely to be most effective?

• How can biocontrol of Campylobacter on farms and during processing make a

difference? What are the best approaches to biocontrol?

• What is it about the biology of the bacteria, the bird, and the interaction

between them that compounds the problem?

Strategic Collaboration Schemes Tackling Campylobacter in the Food Chain

£70m investment to support agricultural innovations:

• Taking innovative ideas from any sector or discipline

with the potential to provide an economic boost to the

UK Agri-Tech industry, by tackling challenges in

agriculture.

• £60m will be invested through InnovateUK and BBSRC.

• Department for International Development will

contribute £10m to support the transfer of technology

and new products to developing countries.

Sustainable Agriculture & Food Innovation Platform

A £90m+ programme of investment over 5 years from 2010–14

Objective: to help UK businesses develop innovative technologies,

production systems and supply chain solutions that will sustainably

increase the productivity of the UK Agri-food sector, whilst reducing its

environmental impact.

co-funded by:

25

Collaborative Initiatives Enabling new connections

Science-led, responsive mode grants where

an industrial partner contributes in cash 10%

of the project cost: www.bbsrc.ac.uk/ipa

Collaborative research projects

where an industrial consortium

contributes 50%:

www.bbsrc.ac.uk/business/collab

orative-research/link/stand-alone-

link.aspx

26

© Thinkstock

Under the bar: Acrylamide

and Food Safety

“Acrylamide must have been in

our diet for thousands of years,

so it is new knowledge, not a

new risk, and levels have already

been reduced as a result of that

knowledge and the response of

the food industry.”

News story: www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/food-security/2013/130206-f-acrylamide-and-food-safety.aspx

Nigel Halford, Rothamsted Research

27

Skills and knowledge Exchange

BBSRC supports approximately 125 PhD

studentships in collaboration with industry

each year: www.bbsrc.ac.uk/icase

Support for translation of fundamental

research to practical application in order to

maximise societal and economic benefits:

www.bbsrc.ac.uk/business/commercialisation

/follow-on.aspx

Supports people movement to exchange

knowledge, technology and skills, while

developing bioscience research and

addressing our strategic priorities:

www.bbsrc.ac.uk/flip

28

Agrifood supply chain

KTP competition

• Competition budget: £2.3m including co-funding

– Comp flyer published: June 2014

– Competition close: Feb 2015

• Project duration: 2 years

• Three high-level challenges in scope:

– innovating to benefit consumer health,

wellbeing and choice

– improving productivity, resource

efficiency and resilience in the supply chain

– assuring safety and security across the supply chain

29

• BBSRC funded a Knowledge Transfer

Partnership to support Elsoms Seeds and the

Warwick Crop Centre.

• The KTP project enabled the development of a

marker assisted breeding programme in parsnip

using existing knowledge from carrot.

• Facilitated the integration of marker technology

within the traditional breeding business.

• Strengthened business/academic relationship.

“This project provided us with an excellent opportunity to improve the

understanding of breeder’s needs and how we can transfer academic

knowledge to further their goals.” Graham Teakle, Warwick Crop Centre

© Elsoms Seeds Ltd

Elaine Broomfield, Team Lead Email: elaine.broomfield@bbsrc.ac.uk James Phillips, Senior Business Interaction Manager Email: james.phillips@bbsrc.ac.uk Faith Smith, Senior Business Interaction Manager Email: faith.smith@bbsrc.ac.uk

Evangelia Kougioumoutzi, Innovation Manager Email: evangelia.kougioumoutzi@bbsrc.ac.uk

Jennifer Postles, Senior Business Interaction Manager Email: jennifer.postles@bbsrc.ac.uk Andy Cureton, Head of Business Interaction Unit Email: andy.cureton@bbsrc.ac.uk

Agri-Food Business Interaction Team

Agri-Tech Strategy –

Catalyst and Innovation

Centres, SAF-IP, Waste

DRINC, CIRC, Crops,

Food Security

ARC, SARIC,

Aquaculture

SARIC

Agri-Tech Innovation

Centres

Agri-Food Strategic

Business Engagement