Episode 12 Transcript: Positive Impact: A new generation of business with society at heart
Nigel Campbell
Welcome to Episode 12 of the UCL B podcast with me, Nigel Campbell. Today we’re looking at positive impact. Many commercial businesses in the past have defined themselves through the lens of profit turnover and return to shareholders. But positive impact in the world was often simply relegated to CSR; but a new generation of businesses are being created out of brilliant world improving ideas by academics from UCL, specifically, with positive social impact at their heart.
The commercialisation process has can be quite a long road, requiring financial, legal and practical support, and that’s what UCL Business provides to the most promising impactful innovations. So today, we’re going to look at two inventors who are on that journey and look at how their inventions might improve our future world.
But first, Dr. Anne Lane, CEO of UCL Business to find out how they go about finding those bright ideas, which will improve lives, and what it takes for them to scale to a point where they’re having true impact. Anne, welcome to the podcast.
Dr Anne Lane
Thanks very much for having me, Nigel. Lovely to talk to you.
Nigel Campbell
UCLB is 30 years old, happy birthday. How would you sum up the impact of those 30 years that the commercialization that you do has had and in terms of improving people’s lives or having a positive impact in the world?
Dr Anne Lane
I think I’ve been involved with UCL Business for a lot of those 30 years. We cover the whole range of UCL’s research base, which is huge. So, you’ve got 12,000 academics, from things as far afield as ancient history, anthropology right through to AI.
Our portfolio covers all of those areas from things like cell and gene therapies, right through to new innovations from the Slade School of Fine Art using mining waste products, which have a huge impact on the environment, to things like Trim Tots to help healthy eating from very young children right through to an app to monitor diabetes. And then during COVID, UCL Ventura’s breathing device, which went out, not just to the NHS in the UK, but worldwide to give access to countries to be able to design and disseminate that breathing device right across the world.
We have a huge impact locally and internationally, and I think that’s just really a reflection of how UCL is London’s global university.
Nigel Campbell
I mean, that’s extraordinary that you mentioned that 12,000 academics. That is an enormous range, as you’ve said. How do you go about finding those world changing ideas that that you want to commercialise and scale? It must be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Dr Anne Lane
It absolutely is. And I do think sometimes people think that we just find these ideas, file a patent, and then the money just comes rolling in. And, if only it was like that! I would love it if it was like that, but it really isn’t. In fact, finding those ideas is the hardest and most challenging part of what we do in UCL Business, and I think there’s a number of ways we do it.
We have a very talented team of business managers who all have technical and scientific backgrounds. They have departmental and institutional responsibilities across the university to build those relationships with the academic base and with UCL’s researchers.
I think we also work in a very entrepreneurial university, and that really helps because UCL encourages an entrepreneurial environment that actually has academics thinking about things like that, too. So very often, researchers will come to us with ideas, and we need that because we couldn’t possibly have a business manager in every single department at UCL because there’s more than 100…I think at last count it was 156 departments at UCL. There’s no way that we could cover that a huge range.
I think as well, providing training within the university so that people know, what’s involved in developing their intellectual property, how it can be protected and how you can maximise the impact of that whether it’s financial, which is always good to return money back to the university and people’s research, or whether it’s economic or societal. I think you have to have a range of approaches and tackling all areas of that. I think the key really is having a university that is tuned into enterprise and innovation and has a whole department dedicated to that that really supports our efforts.
Nigel Campbell
What for you have a standout innovations or ideas that have been real game changers over the last 30 years? You’ve mentioned a huge range of technologies and businesses that have been built out of those. But are there any favourites for you, that you think that is the epitome of world changing?
Dr Anne Lane
Yeah, I won’t pick out any favourites because that’d be like picking out your favourite child. So it’s, that’s a really unfair question, but I’m going to try and answer it because there’s lots of things that I just think are fantastic. You’ve got some of the best minds in the world at UCL.
I think the first one I would choose is Roctavian, which is a gene therapy for Haemophilia A, which is a deficiency of Factor-8 clotting factor and causes huge life changing issues for the people who have that condition. Our gene therapy is effectively a cure for Haemophilia A. It goes from three injections of Factor-8 into those patients that have to come into hospital to have that, to one injection over a lifetime. So, to me, that’s transformative. That’s fabulous.
But then equally, we’ve got something like Satalia, which is a spinout company from the Department of Computer Science at UCL. The algorithms that company developed and are used – if you order your delivery from Tesco, for instance, that algorithm and software is behind making sure that delivery reaches your front door, but does it in the most environmentally friendly manner. It’s the most efficient way of actually bringing that lorry to your doorstep to deliver your groceries. And I think that has something that everybody can identify with, I probably think most people in this country have had some online grocery deliveries, or Amazon or whoever it is, and actually, in order to do that, in the most efficient and less impactful way on the environment, is the best thing to do.
Nigel Campbell
Wow. I mean, that’s very impressive indeed, and when you really think about it, yeah, that is a massive range of technologies and changes to everybody’s life. So, looking ahead to the next 30 years then of UCLB, what big global challenges or areas of life, do you think we could all see big improvements from commercialised or scaled innovations that are coming out of universities?
Dr Anne Lane
Well, again, I mean, I’ll just pick out two because I think there will be a range of challenges that that come forward, like food security, other things, but the two, I want to focus on are climate change, and the ageing population.
And I think that’s where things like AI come into their own. So, people are very concerned, I think about the bad effects that AI could have. But actually, there’s some really positive effects. One standout example is Carbon Re, which is a spinout again, from UCL that looks at improving manufacturing processes to reduce their impact on the environment. Concrete manufacturing is huge, because we’ve got an increasing population, people need places to live, and concrete is one of the main elements of that new building world. I think having this producing by 50%, the impact that that concrete production has on the environment is huge. So that’s one area where we’re doing a lot of work. We have a Climate Change Institute at UCL as well, that’s focusing on this.
And then I think, on the side of the ageing population, clearly, we’ve got the Dementia Research Institute Centre at UCL, which is a national network. But again, in terms of building smart houses, we’ve got the Bartlett School of Architecture. That area is looking at how can we actually adapt the new houses to help an ageing population where you need that urban environment and housing environment for people to be able to carry on living in their own houses for as long as possible.
So, I think those are the two major challenges that I would look at, and clearly cell and gene therapy will have an impact in those areas. But in terms of the everyday practical things, those I think are the two major ones that I will pick out.
Nigel Campbell
Exciting times and lots to look forward to. Anne Lane, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
Dr Anne Lane
Thank you, Nigel.
Nigel Campbell
Joining me now are two academics turned business entrepreneurs who are on that journey as we speak. Buffy Price is COO and co-founder of Carbon Re, a growing business created from research at UCL Energy Institute, which aims to reduce industrial co2 by Gigatonnes, by using artificial intelligence to optimise energy intensive production processes such as cement making steel and glass production. Buffy, welcome to the podcast.
Buffy Price
Hi, Nigel. Thank you very much for having me here today.
Nigel Campbell
Also joining us is Professor Pete Coffey. He leads the rescue repair and regeneration team at University College London’s Institute of Ophthalmology. He’s a leading expert in the transplantation of human retinal cells to halt deterioration, and in some cases even restore sight in types of age- related macular degeneration. Professor Coffey is one of the founders of Tenpoint Therapeutics, a business committed to defeating degenerative eye diseases. Pete, welcome to the podcast.
Dr Pete Coffey
Hi there! Thanks very much for having me.
Nigel Campbell
So, both of you are at the forefront of transformative technologies, which could have a huge global impact. So, for our listener, I wonder if you could briefly describe your innovation, and how you think it’ll make a difference in the world. Buffy, you go first, why not?
Buffy Price
Thanks. Well, as you mentioned, we are focusing on decarbonizing energy-intensive industries. We’re starting with the cement industry, which accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Combine the foundation industries that include steel, glass, ceramics, paper, and chemicals accounted for about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So, the impact is huge.
We are focusing on the pyro- processing part on materials production, which uses vast amounts of fossil fuels to generate very, very high. So, in cement, that’s about 40% of the total emissions.
Our technology is a cloud-based process efficiency platform that can plug directly into the distributed control centre of a cement plant and optimise the processes recommended set points for the cement plant operator to be able to generate the same amount of throughput at a consistent quality whilst using the most optimal amount of fuel.
At the moment we’re looking at between 2 and 5% reduction in fuel use. We think we can push that envelope to about for 8% reduction, and potentially with additional features up to about 14 to 15% reduction. So, as you can imagine, on a global scale, that impact can be huge. We are looking at the megaton to gigatonne impact in terms of CO2 reduction.
Nigel Campbell
That’s really extraordinary. I mean, when you when you look at, you know, the long-term things which governments are trying to do to reduce carbon, there are things which are available and presumably implementable relatively quickly as a digital technology.
Buffy Price
That’s exactly right, and really was the driver for our first product as a company, we know that cement production is going to double by 2050. We have strict net zero targets to reach by 2030. So, we are working within the existing envelope with existing cement plants, so that we’re not requiring any hardware, any changes, any capex costs. We are purely optimising how cement is made today.
Most of the cement plants have a life span of 30, 40 to 50 years. So, we know that these cement plants are going to be operating over the next decades. So, being able to reduce the fuel that is being burned today, and in the coming decade, is pivotal and going to have a lot of impact.
Nigel Campbell
Amazing. You know, the prospect of halting one of the most widespread causes of sight loss must be incredibly exciting. Tell us more about that, and what you think the difference will be, and what it is that you that you’ve done.
Dr Pete Coffey
So hi, Nigel! It was back in 2009 with UCLB, that we basically took a step outside of the lab and went for what is now a new paradigm within medicine, which is instead of taking a person at a time in which they’re suffering from a particular ailment, and typically maintaining that person at the level they enter a doctor’s waiting room. But actually, can we in some way restore the biology of that person back to the state it was prior to the onset of whatever problem they’re suffering from. So, can we actually restore a person’s health and biology to a state prior to the onset of a disease? And this new paradigm within medicine has gone further in trying to establish that biology by replacing cells that actually die in a person. So, almost like the organ transplants that are already available for heart, lung, liver, kidney, but on a much more specific application.
And what we’re looking at Moorfields Eye Hospital, and the Institute of Ophthalmology, (and if anyone can spell ophthalmology, well done), it’s to replace the cells of the back of the eye in people who sadly suffer from a condition known as age-related macular degeneration. So, it’s a population over the age of 701, and it’s nearly 30% of those over 70 start to lose their sight due to the death of cells at the back of the eye. Our programme has been able to make those cells in a dish and replace them back into those patients. So, we’ve just finished the trial now in which patients in that in the group, in which they received the treatment, are getting some visual recovery back.
And back in 2018, we actually published some nice work, in which one of the patients couldn’t even see the book that was in front of them, and after the transplant, was reading 50 words a minute, and he has maintained that for the last nearly eight years now. So, this is, you know, a new part, I like to say, but it’s one of the first; if not, the first to show, that this ability of restoring someone’s biology prior to the onset of disease is achievable by using these new cell type approaches. So UCL is at the forefront.
UCLB has been with us on that travel, as you say it’s taken quite a while. But they’ve been there since 2007-2009. We now have a biotech company, and UCL B are still with that biotech company. They are on the board of that company as well, which has been a great achievement at the end of May, or nearly the end of my career, where actually, I believe rather than writing a journal article that may actually be something beneficial in terms of a patient treatment. So, it’s been a great journey.
Nigel Campbell
This is one of the things that is a limitation on podcasts in a way, because if the listener could see everyone on this call at the moment, you’d see them smiling from ear to ear just thinking about sheer potential for both of these innovations to really transform everyone’s lives. So, you know, it’s really inspiring, and I think everyone fires everyone’s imagination. And you know, some of those stats that you both mentioned there gigatons of co2, 30% of over 70 is potentially benefiting from some kind of revolutionary treatment to save their eyesight. These are the kinds of things which the 21st century and innovators like yourselves wants to see.
But it is a long road, isn’t it from the lab to the marketplace? And why do you think it’s important to commercialise technologies? After all, there are many academics and researchers who might be a little bit uncomfortable, perhaps with the whole process of commercialisation and the notion of it. Why is it important? And what do you think the impact of commercialisation will have in terms of your innovations? Buffy?
Buffy Price
Well, for us, it’s absolutely essential because our product is artificial intelligence, we require plant data. So, we need to be out in plants. These are really volatile, highly complex environments. So, it’d be very, very difficult to be able to generate those kinds of conditions in any lab environment.
Certainly, the path to commercialisation for artificial intelligence is a long one. It requires a lot of upfront costs, in terms of the people power, the excellent brain power that we get from the likes of UCL.
We’re also a spinout of Cambridge University, so we’re able to attract amazing talent and it takes a while to develop the models to create that understanding of the pyro-processing process. So, we also need to be able to demonstrate to our investors that there is a market. We can have a very impactful product, but if the cement producers aren’t interested in buying it and integrating it in within their systems, then we’re not going to have any climate impact at all. The reason we went with this process-efficiency product in the first instance, was really driven by that existential crisis of we need to have impact in the short term.
Also, that’s another reason to be going out to market as soon as possible, have those cement plants using our software, whether in the early days, that’s the 1-2% reduction. You know, maybe later on, we’ll be pushing that envelope up higher, as I mentioned previously. We need to we need to be out there. We want the plants using it and commercialisation, that’s the way to do it.
Nigel Campbell
Pete, commercialisation, and medicine, not often thought of as comfortable bedfellows for most people who are on the receiving end of those things, but obviously, that they’re critical. What role is it playing in in rolling out your transplant technology to help save people’s eyesight?
Dr Pete Coffey
And so yeah, Nigel, I think as you rightly say, something which people don’t like talking about in terms of medicines, as you know, especially within the UK, where it’s a social health network, but there’s nearly 700,000 patients suffer from the condition we were trying to treat. In my best, even if I were working seven days a week, I would not be able to make enough of the therapy for 700,000 people.
So, you know, we need to invest in both the manufacturing, the infrastructure, and also the clinic. I mean, one of the one of the issues, which you never think about when you start these processes is, we can make as many of the cells now that we need for that population. That is no longer a problem, which was part of the process as in, can we make enough of the medicine? And the answer is yes.
But now when need clinicians and hospitals to deliver to a population of 700,000. So, that’s a great problem to have, as it’s now down to the clinicians in being able to surgically implant those cells into patients. And again, that infrastructure, not just the manufacturing, the teaching, the clinical expertise, that has to be financed. And, you know, we need to do that ourselves, we can’t just call on government to be able to, to treat 700,000 patients. So, commercialisation is crucial to success.
But equally, one of the things we are very wary of, is how often these new therapeutics are often priced very high, and what we are trying to do is not get into a position where it’s not affordable to the NHS. We want it to be affordable. But equally those people who are investing do want to make some benefit for themselves. So, you know, we want to play this in into a situation whereby we can deliver it to the NHS to an affordable price, and one which can be delivered to a patient in a safe and efficient way.
The only way we can do that is by bringing on commercial partners who have that expertise. It’s taken me down routes, I never thought I would ever even go or even understand and some of them I still don’t. But that’s the beauty of going into commercialisation.
Nigel Campbell
We have sort of subtitle this podcast, this episode, about positive impact. How do you go about defining what positive impact is in in your areas of life? And how challenging is it to measure? Pete, you mentioned 700,000 doesn’t have a specific figure in terms of a patient population; how you going to know when you’ve been successful and had that positive impact?
Dr Pete Coffey
Positive impacting in the project, which I’m, you know, presenting to you guys today, I think as many, many aspects. It’s not necessarily just delivering that treatment to the patient. It’s also the skillset that you need. So, you’re actually bringing on new doctors, you’re bringing on new scientists, you’re bringing on new manufacturing techniques. All of these are actually in terms of the country beneficial.
So, one of the one of the things that’s happened is now the London project is being set as an exemplar for these types of regenerative medicines. We now have three or four different groups, who are calling on the expertise, to help them go into clinical trials for things like Parkinson’s disease, for example, is one of them. We have Swedish groups working with us. We have a number of groups and that’s now globally impacting equally, in terms of getting the therapies to the NHS, how the NHS can take, become an alpha clinic is what we’re calling it at the moment, so taking discovery science to the clinic in the most efficient and also effective way. It’s having major impacts in a number of different areas, not just that specific patient who’s receiving the treatment.
Even in the regulatory process of how do we make sure these medicines are absolutely safe. We’re also working with the FDA in the US. Again, this whole endeavour is bringing in global groups and organisations to which we can benefit, and they can benefit. The impact, you know, goes in many, many different areas. Nothing to do with commerce, in fact, but to deal with the, you know, the ongoing issues about any medicine when you’re trying to bring it to a patient.
Nigel Campbell
And Buffy, presumably you’re as you’re going along this route, also discovering that your innovation is sparking knock-on positive impacts, not just in certain industries.
Buffy Price
Absolutely, I mean, the impact that we’re producing is much more direct, and more easily to count. The impact that Carbon Re is achieving is much more easy to calculate, because we’re talking about a reduction in fossil fuel use or increase in alternative fuels. At the moment, the installation of one feature in an average sized cement plant is equivalent to taking about 31,000 cars off the road every year. It’s about 4800 tonnes.
So that is, you know, a direct correlation there. But there are additional impacts. If we don’t over burn the clinker, it means that further downstream, you don’t need to use so much electricity in the grinding process. By having a more stable plant, you have less downtime – very hard to quantify how much that downtime would be, in the absence of it happening. Having more throughput makes it a more reliable process for the producer to be able to meet their clients’ requests.
So, there are lots and lots of knock-on impacts that are great for the cement producer, but harder to define. And more broadly, we are teaching our AI algorithms, the principles of physics and chemistry in a closed box process. This has never been done before and we hope our future vision of where we can take this technology, might be looking at how we make materials and how that materials transformation happens in those high heat processes.
The longer-term impacts of our technologies, what we’re able to do by learning and getting insights into what happens in that high heat process might evolve into a new generation of materials for our future cities. We don’t know yet we have high ambition.
Nigel Campbell
Wow, ambition, indeed, and really exciting in both of those areas.
We touched on earlier both of you mentioned UCL Business’ of role in that commercialisation process. What have you learned along the way, starting, perhaps from a point of having the idea but not having, really a sense of the entrepreneurship and the and the journey, the commercialisation journey to where you are now. What are the big things that you’ve learned from this this process that you’ve been through? Pete?
Dr Pete Coffey
Wow, that’s a good question, Nigel.
What have I learned? I think the major thing I’ve learned is how to present your case, in terms of someone who’s wanting to invest in a particular programme of research or studies, who clearly isn’t as expert, as Buffy and myself say, are in our own fields. But being able to present it in such a way that they understand our enthusiasm as to why we believe this is hugely important and can actually deliver. That’s the other thing, as in, what is it we’re going to deliver to these organisations, these groups to the NHS to, you know, cement, whatever it is.
It’s how best can we actually present that to enable investors to thoroughly understand their risk in backing these areas, or even doing the same with UCLB. UCLB has a huge access to projects (from) UCL itself, you know, it goes from cement to eyes. I mean, that’s it, and how the hell do you decide what you think and what you want to believe in? That process of going together with UCLB, to really understand what is it that you can succeed in by taking this project forward.
Nigel Campbell
Buffy, what are the things that you… what’s the main thing that you’ve learned about either yourself or your business or your innovation or your process?
Buffy Price
Well, I found myself nodding to Pete’s comments there, certainly in articulating our product and understanding how to sell it to the commercial buyer, but also to the amazing talent that we get out of the likes of UCL (and) to draw the AI talent, which is quite rare and has an opportunity to go and be earning huge salaries at Meta and Google and the like. So, being able to refine that message over time has been quite a journey for us.
A lot of it was trial by you know, learn by doing. But the opportunities that we have, by being part of a portfolio with UCLB is, this incredible network and this peer-to-peer learning. So as different as mine and Pete’s companies are, some of the tangible business challenges we have are very familiar, and just being able to have those networking opportunities to share our pain points and our wins with peers has been really, really valuable.
Nigel Campbell
So, there’ll be people listening to this podcast who’ve, you know, been inspired by both of your stories. What would you say to them if they’ve got a burning desire to change the world, and they’ve got an idea that they think, will do it? What would your piece of advice be from the highs and lows that you’ve experienced so far in your journey? Buffy, what would you say?
Buffy Price
So, I’m laughing at the question. It has been a challenging journey. What has got me through it has been the people I’ve been working with. Some people are really bold and will go it alone.
My recommendation would be to find one or two, three co-founders to go on that journey with you, to share the loads when on the dark nights where things are looking bleak, having some brilliant peers, my co-founders Professor Aidan Sullivan from UCL, and Dr. Dennis Summerbell from Cambridge, just really got me through some tricky times. And without that support without that peer input and the diverse thinking, I don’t think I could have got this far. So, my recommendation would be to find that person that you can work with.
Nigel Campbell
How about you, Pete?
Dr Pete Coffey
As I would say, exactly, as Buffy says, it’s getting a good group of people to which you can trust in which you can bring in. But listen to the advice you’ve been given. For example, Medicine was full of this, having a great idea and thinking you’ve got a great target doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do that in a patient, for example. So, listen to the advice you’ve been given, specifically on the commercial side. It’s getting used to a field to which, if you are an innovator, as opposed to someone who’s used to commercial, then there’s a lot you need to learn.
You may be smart in your own area but recognise your limitations. And, you know, be enthused by your idea, but listen to what’s being said, because you’ll get to the position quicker that you want to be, by listening rather than antagonising should we say. So having the idea is great, but that’s just the start.
Nigel Campbell
Amazing. It’s been really inspiring speaking to both of you. And I think anyone can see the potential and real positive impacts that both of your innovations, your ideas, and the businesses that you are building are going to have in the coming years and it’s phenomenally exciting. So, Pete Coffey and Buffy Price. Thank you very much indeed for joining me today.
Buffy and Pete
Thanks very much.
Nigel Campbell
And if you’d like to hear more from innovators about how they’ve made successful businesses from their ideas, check out our other episodes in this UCLB series. And there are more inspiring stories in UCLB’s brand new Impact Report, which you can download by visiting www.uclb.com/impact. Thank you indeed for listening.