LYVA Labs to lead open innovation network for  commercialising microbiome research

LYVA Labs has been chosen to run one of 11 new projects, funded following a series of sandpit events in Liverpool and London that were delivered by iiCON (Infection Innovation Consortium). The projects focus on combating infectious diseases and have received a share of £1.5 million in funding from UKRI as part of its ongoing work to support innovative ways of tackling infections.

The project LYVA Labs is delivering with partners Cofactory is an open innovation network to drive the commercialisation of microbiome research. LYVA Labs will work with biotechnology businesses to support them with technical, product, and strategy development.  

LYVA Labs was funded to lead the open innovation network, building on its successful delivery of a Microbials Accelerator programme on behalf of Innovate UK. 24 UK founders benefitted from the world-leading microbials academic expertise, and the commercialisation support needed to help accelerate their business growth.

The overall aim of the open innovation network is to find ways to launch more microbiome products, quicker. LYVA Labs will create a microbiome innovation network focused on improving pathways towards clinical and commercial impact by convening researchers, industry, healthcare bodies, and business developers to identify solutions to microbiome research translation challenges. Known barriers include clinical trial design, regulatory hurdles, data analytics and modelling, manufacturing, and formulation.

 LYVA Labs’ CEO, Lorna Green, said:

“Our longer-term goal is to leverage our findings to build an open innovation ecosystem to support the translation of microbiome research into clinical and commercial impact. This will improve health outcomes and drive economic growth in our region and beyond.” 

Paul Dobson, from Cofactory, added:

“Our business helps companies solve deep technical problems around bioinformatics and AI, and to deliver impact through commercialisation. We are excited to bring our experience to microbiome research, develop better data analysis tools, and establish clear pathways to impact through commercialisation."

Microbiome research has demonstrated enormous potential to improve human health and positively impact across areas including agri-tech, environment and energy, food, and industrial biotechnology. Barriers to delivering clinical and commercial impact remain. LYVA Labs will bring together stakeholders including academics, healthcare bodies, regulators, industry, and supply chains, to better understand and address how these barriers curtail impact. The work of this project will build on the recommendations of KTN’s, Microbiome Strategic Roadmap.

Why does the region need this open innovation network?

The UK has considerable underpinning microbiome R&D capacity and capability, including the Microbiome Innovation Centre (MIC). Yet, many innovations fail to realise their full potential because we lack the technology transfer and business development support to translate research to clinical or commercial impact. This project aims to define better ways to deliver greater clinical and commercial impact from microbiome research.

Building upon recommendations from previous microbiome networks, strategic roadmaps and stakeholder workshops, we will run follow-up workshops to characterise barriers in greater depth and propose specific technical, infrastructure, support or other remedies. The project's outputs will help establish an open innovation ecosystem of technical, commercial, and regulatory partners, to provide technology transfer and business development support, from microbiome research to the clinic or market, driving growth in UK PLC and attracting industry from overseas. For information on the other projects visit: https://tinyurl.com/3ddpm4f8