I’m pleased to say that the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s (BBSRC) refreshed Bioscience for an Integrated Understanding of Health (BIUH) Strategic Research and Innovation Framework is live.
I know that’s a lot of words, but I’ll try to explain why I think they really mean something.
But before I do, allow me to acknowledge the swathe of individuals from across BBSRC’s advisory community whose collective thoughts are reflected in our updated framework.
I’m deeply grateful to everyone involved, but I want to say a particular thank you to Professors Louise Dye and Paul Haggarty. As former chairs of BBSRC’s Bioscience for Health Strategy Advisory Panel, both Louise and Paul were extremely generous with their time in helping shape our future thinking.
Clearly, it’s taken a lot of time and effort to produce such a document. So why have we done it?
BBSRC’s multiple roles in health research
‘Health’ sits in a somewhat unique place within BBSRC’s portfolio. As far as human health is concerned, this is the only area of bioscience research and innovation where BBSRC is not the primary national public funder. In fact, there are many other funders spanning across the public, private and third sector.
This means our role as a funder sits in a particularly complex landscape, so it’s really important to be clear about why we prioritise the research interests that we do.
And first and foremost, let me say that the research and innovation BBSRC supports in this space has tremendously unique value.
That unique value is not only in creating impactful knowledge, but in developing the tools needed to support the quest for healthier, happier lives.
Our refreshed framework sets out what we think this unique value is. Hopefully the framework also clearly sets out how that value complements the remit of other health funding organisations that researchers may engage with to support their work.
What makes a resilient organism and how can this go wrong?
BBSRC-funded research plays a pivotal role in developing our understanding of what makes humans, and indeed all living things, healthy.
We are ultimately curious to understand the deep biological mechanisms at play in keeping us robust and resilient to challenge, which is a good definition of ‘health’.
When these processes start to break down, it leaves us frail and susceptible to a range of infectious and non-infectious diseases, particularly as we age. Understanding how this shift happens means we can develop strategies to better avoid this, or at the very least delay it!
But it’s not just about us humans
Purple tomato fruit genetically engineered to produce anthocyanins. Credit: John Innes Centre
BBSRC’s research remit, of all the funders in the health landscape, is also unique because it has a major focus on food and agriculture. That being the production of the food we eat and the rapidly changing systems needed to deliver it.
For BBSRC, that means we must help investigate:
- the processing of food
- what happens to our bodies when we eat food
- the huge populations of microbes we share our bodies with when we eat
- how our bodies change depending on what we eat, or even when we eat
We know that dietary influences on health are enormous. That’s why a joined-up research approach is key to understanding what changes can be made to promote better health outcomes and the innovations that will support this.
The UK’s major public funder of animal health research
While BBSRC may not be the primary UK funder of human health research, we definitely are when it comes to animal health research. Our investments are primarily focused on tackling emerging and endemic diseases of farmed animals.
Major BBSRC-supported national centres, such as the Pirbright Institute and Roslin Institute, are global leaders in infectious disease research. Their research aims to alleviate the suffering of animals and the people who depend on them, meaning they also play a crucial role in protecting national and global food security.
Harnessing the power of comparative biology
BBSRC’s unique funding role, as it spans human and animal health and disease, means we add a lot of research value by sharing and comparing. For example, many animals have quite different ageing trajectories, which is why you’ll rarely see an old-looking wild bird!
We can learn an awful lot through comparative biology approaches that seek to understand both the similarities and differences between animals, including humans.
The One Health approach
Our dual role in health research has enabled us to be early pioneers of One Health approaches to disease research. This approach recognises that pathogens affecting humans typically originate from the wider environment, evolving and transmitting through the food system.
Effective strategies for predicting, preventing and mitigating infectious disease outbreaks require a comprehensive understanding of the entire system in which they emerge, evolve and spread. In turn, this understanding helps us better predict which measures will be most effective at preventing and curtailing outbreaks of new or re-emerging pathogens.
In cases like the slow-moving pandemic of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), One Health aids our understanding of the factors driving the emergence and spread of microbes resistant to our chemical control toolkit, guiding us towards new and more effective strategies to counteract this.
Take COVID-19 as an example. Our collective response to the challenges posed by COVID-19 highlighted the value of our work across human and animal infectious disease systems. Adopting a One Health approach, researchers can integrate knowledge and tools to develop critical interventions, such as new vaccines for major epidemics, at increased speed and scale.
Driving novel innovations
African Buffalo. Credit: The Pirbright Institute
BBSRC’s investments in health research mean we can drive novel biotechnology innovations, which are critical in equipping us with the tools and technologies needed to detect and tackle infectious disease.
We see an integrated understanding of health, and BBSRC’s role supporting this, as essential in developing real-world solutions that improve health and wellbeing for humans and animals alike. The nomenclature is a mouthful, but we use it now for a reason!
Why refresh our roadmap for health research?
We published BBSRC’s first Bioscience For Health Strategic Research Framework in 2015, and much has changed since then. Thinking has evolved and so have the ways in which we work.
With the formation of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the research councils have gained access to more collective funding mechanisms to support more systemic, interdisciplinary approaches.
This includes support from UKRI’s strategic themes, the likes of which include securing better health, ageing and wellbeing and tackling infections, the latter of which I take a lead for on behalf of UKRI partners.
Global challenges, global solutions
Mechanisms such as the global challenges research fund have also enabled us to take a more multilateral approach to health problems. This work is essential as many of the challenges impact the global south and countries undergoing rapid social, economic and demographic change in particular.
Exciting new national capabilities have also been established since publishing our last framework, namely the Quadram Institute. As one of BBSRC’s strategically supported institutes, Quadram Institute is on a mission to deliver healthier lives through innovation in gut health, microbiology and food.
COVID-19 and other major diseases such as avian influenza have emerged and are still with us. As they evolve they are posing new challenges, as the recent detection of avian influenza in cows in the US has shown.
We’ve learned a lot and worked increasingly in strategic partnership with other funders, nationally and internationally, to respond to health challenges as they emerge.
Looking backwards and forwards
Our new framework showcases some of the exciting impacts and outcomes BBSRC-supported researchers have achieved since the original framework was published. It also provides a more nuanced and contemporary framing for BBSRC’s ongoing health research mission.
We are building on our original themes and priority areas as well as setting out what we seek to achieve in coming years, working with our research communities and other partners.
Bioscience is an evolving landscape
As the world of bioscience evolves, so must our research strategy. We are currently consulting on a review of BBSRC’s Forward Look for UK Bioscience and as we update these strategies, we expect to frame and use them in complementary ways.
We will also soon be publishing a collection of deep dive position papers on AMR and ageing research. These are two areas of collaborative strategic endeavour where we think a further unpacking of what BBSRC-funded bioscience can achieve will be helpful and timely to us and our partners.
I hope our refreshed framework will interest and even inspire you, our wider research community and our collaborative industry partners.
We welcome your feedback and look forward to working with you to deliver exciting new health research outcomes that will make a real difference to us all.
Interested in learning more about BBSRC’s role in driving the One Health approach?
Sign up to our alerts to get notified about our next blog, which takes a closer look at BBSRC’s One Health activity as we celebrate international One Health Day on Sunday 3 November.
Top image: Cell infected with foot and mouth disease (red). Credit: The Pirbright Institute
Providing strategic leadership for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s (BBSRC) mission-led research areas, Dr Jef Grainger has a successful track record in research strategy development and investment case-building across a range of BBSRC’s portfolio areas.
He was previously seconded to the Government Office of Science to work on the joint publication of the ‘Animal and Plant Health in the UK: building our science capability’ document with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Jef has also worked on a follow-up document for the UK government and UK Research and Innovation on the vision and high-level strategy for UK animal and plant health research.
In September 2023, he was appointed as BBSRC’s Interim Executive Director for Research Strategy and Programmes, with responsibility for:
- frontier and interdisciplinary research
- responsive and strategic programmes
- science strategy, including horizon-scanning
- tools and technology
He returned to his substantive post as Associate Director for Research Strategy and Programmes on 1 July 2024.
Jef has an honours degree in plant science from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in plant molecular biology from the University of Cambridge. He undertook a period of postdoctoral research in plant virology at the John Innes Centre before joining BBSRC in 2004.