Funding for human nutrition research – past successes and future opportunities
When it comes to funding of human nutrition research in the UK, the Diet Research Industry Club (DRINC), led by the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council (BBSRC) has been a success story. A particular feature of DRINC has been its public-private nature – a genuine collaboration between a publicly funded research council and a consortium of food businesses. The structure of DRINC is described in an editorial published this month (Buttriss 2022; The BBSRC‐DRINC Research Programme: Successes and future perspectives - Buttriss - Nutrition Bulletin - Wiley Online Library), which accompanies a curated Virtual Issue of Nutrition Bulletin that draws together over 20 papers published in the journal describing research funded through the DRINC process (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-3010.BBSRC-DRINC-Research-Programme). All of the included papers are ‘free to read’.
The Academy of Nutrition Sciences notes that the DRINC initiative has now come to an end, to be succeeded by the Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club (Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club: Innovation Hubs – UKRI), positioned to respond to future industry challenges, and to meet policy aims across UK Government and the Devolved Administrations. It was referenced in the Government’s Food Strategy published in June 2022 (Government food strategy - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)). A summary of the aims of the two-phase initiative can be found in the editorial mentioned above (Buttriss 2022). The successful hubs are expected to be announced shortly.
A further opportunity for researchers in the field of human nutrition is a one-year spotlight on human nutrition (BBSRC launches new responsive mode spotlight pilot – UKRI). But those interested will need to get their skates on as it will run only until October 2023. The theme of the spotlight is ‘building stronger biological understanding of the role of nutrition on human health across the life course’, and is one of three spotlights in a new responsive mode spotlight mechanism that will be active for one year (i.e. over the next three responsive mode rounds), from October 2022. BBSRC is piloting this new funding mechanism to better signal and communicate areas of strategic interest to the bioscience community.
Nutrition scientists have for some time been calling for a greater focus on human nutrition in funding programmes. Research is the cornerstone of practice in nutrition and dietetics, and of well-grounded food policy - robust research is crucial to understand the origins, mechanisms and management of nutrition-related diseases. The Academy of Nutrition Sciences encourages the nutrition science community to rise to the challenge afforded by this one-year pilot, stressing the importance of interdisciplinary research in the context of BBSRC’s 5-year strategy Forward Look for UK Bioscience (ukri.org).