NAPIC is the latest in a string of UK alternative protein research centres – here’s a whistle-stop tour of the exciting new projects

The UK is fast becoming home to an expanding network of research centres dedicated to advancing plant-based, cultivated meat and fermentation-made foods.

Many of these centres are funded by the country’s major public research bodies, and their growth demonstrates the UK government’s recognition of the need to diversify the UK’s protein sources for food security, green growth and future-proof jobs.

The availability of public research funding and the number of researchers working in this area has grown rapidly over recent years. Now, work being carried out at the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC), the Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub (CARMA), the Microbial Food Hub and the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein mark important points in the arrival of alternative protein as a research field in its own right. 

Until recently, a lot of the R&I has been dominated by the private sector – risking that companies keep findings to themselves and independently work on solutions to the same problem. However, researchers based at these centres are now able to collaborate with fellow academics and industry, working on everything from basic scientific discovery to bringing new products and technical innovations to market.

Some of the centres are also examining important societal topics beyond the scope of the private sector, such as the role these products will play in our future food system, and how the public, food producers and farmers can be brought into the discussion.

Here, we examine what these hubs are doing and how they plan to transform alternative protein research – both in the UK and further afield.

National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre

The National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC) was formally launched on 29 November 2024 following the announcement of £15 million in funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Innovate UK, with additional investment from public and private sector partners.

The centre, hosted by the University of Leeds and co-led with the James Hutton Institute, the University of Sheffield, and Imperial College London, has a mission to ‘make alternative proteins mainstream for a sustainable planet’ and is committed to fostering a platform for open-access innovation and establishing the UK as a global leader in this field.

The centre aims to develop new products and ingredients from innovation through to commercialisation while investigating how consumers can integrate these foods into their daily diets and how groups such as food producers can benefit from protein diversification.

NAPIC currently comprises more than 30 interdisciplinary researchers working with 150 national and international partners including businesses, regulators, and investors, and are calling for others to get involved. The centre is focusing on four key knowledge pillars:

• PRODUCE will enable partners to develop alternative protein ingredients and finished products of optimum functional, sensorial and nutritional quality while ensuring a just transition for producers.
• PROCESS aims to accelerate the scaling up of cultivated meat and precision fermentation using models guided by artificial intelligence.
• PERFORM aims to ensure that these foods meet consumer expectations regarding taste, texture and nutrition while safeguarding public health. 
• PEOPLE will focus on affordability, accessibility and acceptability, helping consumers adopt these foods into their diets, and providing new training and business opportunities for producers.

Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub

The Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub (CARMA) was launched in 2023 with £12 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the aim of developing sustainable manufacturing technologies to scale up the production of cultivated meat.

Researchers are also exploring how to develop sustainable palm oil through precision fermentation – a process that uses organisms such as yeast to develop pure dairy or egg proteins, or ingredients such as heme, and has been used for decades to produce medicines like insulin and food enzymes like rennet, found in cheese. 

The centre is led by the University of Bath, under Professor Marianne Ellis who heads an interdisciplinary group of researchers from Aberystwyth University, the University of Bristol, the University of Birmingham, the Royal Agricultural University and University College London – while a growing number of companies are also on board.

As part of their seven-year mission, the team is looking at every aspect of the process – from developing better fermenters in which animal cells can grow to more effective cell culture media and improving the post-processing needed to develop delicious food.

Alongside this technical research, the group focuses on ensuring that cultivated meat can be integrated into wider society and is examining its impact on groups such as consumers and farmers, organising citizen and stakeholder forums to directly engage beyond the boundaries of university-based research.

The team is delivering its objectives through two grand challenges, each with its own aims and six integrated work packages.

The first challenge aims to deliver a template for an integrated UK manufacturing value chain, by:

• Ensuring analysis of cultivated meat’s long-term value and social impacts is embedded into technical decision-making, so innovation can be responsibly integrated into the UK’s wider industrial system.
• Informing a strategy to move cultivated meat and precision fermentation from laboratory to shopping basket through stakeholder and public engagement.
• Informing investment and policy to enable the UK to become a world-leading exporter of products and manufacturing technologies.

The second challenge aims to create the novel technologies needed for scaled-up and cost-effective manufacturing, to make cellular agriculture a financially viable part of the UK economy, by:

• Designing and delivering a template for a UK circular cellular agriculture manufacturing value chain from the outset, informing leading-edge manufacturing technologies, people and processes.
• Establishing the value chain from raw materials to large-scale production that makes cellular agriculture financially, ethically, and sustainably viable as part of UK Trade and Industry.
• Creating the novel, underpinning technologies that will achieve the necessary process intensities at scale, in cost-effective and sustainable ways.

The centre is now inviting UK researchers to apply for pump priming short-term projects aligning with CARMA’s priorities by contacting them at carma-hub@bath.ac.uk by 31 January 2025.

Microbial Food Hub

Imperial College London (ICL) is now home to two centres led by Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, both of which are designed to work alongside each other to maximise their impact – operating from Imperial’s i-Hub innovation campus in the capital’s White City district.

This site will provide a space for startups and larger companies to work alongside scientists, providing access to the expertise and specialist equipment needed to boost innovation.

The Microbial Food Hub was funded with £12.6 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) alongside additional money from other partners and will explore innovative methods of using fermentation, including developing ingredients capable of producing the flavours and textures of animal products.

Experts from the University of Reading, the University of Kent, the University of Aberystwyth, the University of Cambridge and Rothamsted Research, along with industry partners, will also work on the project.

The centre aims to boost the UK’s ability to develop a sustainable bioeconomy by bringing together academics, food industry figures and chefs working on everything from open access technical research to developing products that can be brought to market. 

As well as developing precision fermentation technology, researchers will also explore methods including biomass fermentation – which uses a method similar to beer or yoghurt production to grow large quantities of mycoproteins – and traditional fermentation, which uses microbes to improve the nutritional quality of plant-based products. 

The team aims to harness engineering biology – a set of modern technological tools and processes including those used to create mRNA Covid vaccines – to tackle many of the challenges of scaling up these foods, aiming to deliver a more sustainable, productive, resilient and healthy food system.

Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein 

The Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein will also aim to apply lessons from engineering biology to overcome the obstacles to scaling up cultivated, plant-based, and fermentation-made foods. 

The centre was funded with $30 million (£24 million) from the Bezos Earth Fund and additional funding from ICL, partner institutions and others, aimed at lifting the wider alternative protein research field beyond the issues that have so far held it back.

Academics will partner with researchers from international institutions such as Tufts University in the United States and the Technical University of Denmark as well as having close links with their counterparts at North Carolina State University and the National University of Singapore  – both of which are also funded by the Bezos Earth Fund.

The centre’s work will focus on five pillars:

• RESEARCH will lead innovative projects spanning 40 multidisciplinary teams exploring a vast range of sustainable food development topics.
• TRANSLATION will partner with companies to turn research into commercial products and technologies while helping set up spin-out companies.
• EDUCATION aims to train the talented alternative protein leaders of the future through dedicated master’s and PhD programmes, workshops, webinars and courses.
• KNOWLEDGE will bring together experts such as researchers, industry leaders, regulators and chefs to turn the centre into an international hub to inform an evidence-based discussion about alternative proteins.
• NETWORK will lead a European and international network on sustainable food with links to other existing networks.

Researchers, as well as external companies and collaborators, will have access to facilities helping them explore how to scale up production and improve food safety, while working groups will boost the centre’s impact by providing insights into everything from company creation to regulation, consumer acceptance and sustainability assessments.

The centre will use biofoundries to advance the science of fermentation by developing more robust microbial strains capable of producing high yields of proteins, fats, and other ingredients from renewable feedstocks, and will test new cell lines, more affordable cell culture media and more efficient processes to scale up cultivated meat production.

Researchers will investigate a wide range of neglected crops for use in plant-based foods and work on innovative techniques to extract proteins from plants. They will also combine them with cultivated meat and fermentation-made products to develop tastier and more nutritious products.

Arrival of alternative protein research field

The establishment of these centres sends out a clear signal that alternative protein has arrived as a distinct, essential, and urgently needed academic research field.

Despite these exciting developments, this technology has so far received only a tiny fraction of the investment that has gone towards other climate innovations, such as electric cars and renewable energy. 

Other dedicated initiatives – in the UK and elsewhere in Europe – will join them over the next few years, but given the vast potential of these foods, it is clear that much more talent and innovation is still needed to propel this space to its full potential.

Author

Seren Kell Head of SciTech

Seren works with scientists to develop, fund and promote open-source research on sustainable proteins.