Urgent action in the engineering biology sector is needed or the “UK is at risk once again of seeing the economic benefits of science and technology developed here but exploited overseas”.

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee’s report, Don’t Fail to Scale: Seizing the Opportunities of Engineering Biology, calls for a radical overhaul of investment strategies, regulatory frameworks and talent pipelines.

Engineering biology is a fast-developing and evolving field. While synthetic biology is the design and fabrication of biological components, systems and materials from biological elements, engineering biology is the process of taking those synthetic biology concepts and translating them into solutions.

There are vast applications for engineering biology across many sectors. In healthcare there have been incredible advances, from gene therapies and new vaccines to organs grown from scratch.

Advances in agritech include new pesticides that reduce environmental harm and engineering...