NPL contributes to the House of Lords report on engineering biology

4 minute read

Engineering Biology (EngBio) is well recognised for its potential to drive growth in the UK economy and deliver solutions across health, food security, novel biomaterials and a transition away from fossil fuel-based manufacturing.  

NPL has supported UK EngBio companies for 10 years, with measurement science expertise and facilities and has most recently contributed to the House of Lords engineering biology report “Don’t fail to scale” which describes the challenges, opportunities and investment requirements needed for successful delivery of Engineering Biology technologies for the UK. 

In providing input to the House of Commons evidence gathering sessions, Dr Michael Adeogun, Head of Strategy for Life Sciences and Health, outlined examples of the role of NPL including the development of standards.  

Key points raised were: 

• NPL is an asset base of facilities, skills and knowledge that provides the means to ensure that measurements and standards are internationally comparable and consistent across all market sectors  

• Measurements and standards are the invisible currency that underpin trade and regulatory systems but can also help accelerate innovation and adoption of new technologies such as engineering biology. 

• There is complexity associated with biological systems and factors which combine to make it difficult to reproduce activities at a larger scale. 

• NPL is looking to create new multimodal, multiscale, interoperable measurement techniques and the standards alongside them to look at the whole of the system 

The full report can be found via here 

In summary, it recognises the challenges associated with developing the right standards and a regulatory landscape, which are important to realising the potential of engineering biology. The report also references outputs of a recent workshop convened by NPL and Imperial College, which summarises priorities for standards and metrics required to enable UK engineering biology companies to thrive, attract investment and translate early-stage innovation to manufacturing scale and commercialisation. 

Commenting on the report Dr Michael Adeogun said: “EngBio enabled technologies provide an opportunity for the UK to realise its ambitions for clean, high-tech economic growth across multiple sectors of the economy. The metrology and standards needed to help realise the potential of engineering biology no doubt provide challenges, and we need to bring together multi-disciplinary science teams and collaborate across the EngBio ecosystem to deliver solutions. We are hugely excited at the prospect of continuing our work in EngBio to support delivery of its potential as we have done for the other critical technologies including; Semi conductors, Quantum, Telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence.” 

Prof Max Ryadnov, NPL fellow in Biometrology at NPL said: “Our metrology programmes at NPL have always had a strong focus on delivering solutions aligned to the needs of industry and it is great to see our work collaborating across the many different sectors impacted by engineering biology referenced in this report. Working closely with our partners in the National Measurement System, including the National Measurement Laboratory at LGC and the MHRA, and with collaborators across academia, industry and the wider public sector NPL is well positioned to deliver on EngBio’s potential. NPL’s role as a National Metrology Institute provides a platform to help companies and entrepreneurs across the UK to translate innovation and scale their technologies to deliver high value economic growth across all corners of the UK economy. We continue to engage across industry to ensure we align our metrology programmes to deliver the greatest return on public sector investment and support the delivery of new, secure, high-tech job opportunities in these developing technologies many of which have the potential to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel enabled manufacturing.” 

Find out more about our work in EngBio