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I come to praise ISAPP, not to bury it: Reflections on 15 years as a board member

/in ISAPP Science Blog /by KC

By Prof. Colin Hill PhD, University College Cork

I have been a Board member of ISAPP since 2009, serving as President from 2012 to 2015. This year, following our successful annual meeting in my home city of Cork, I have decided to step down and make way for new blood.

It is normal when a period like this comes to an end to reflect on all the advances in the field in that time and to highlight some of the great strides that have been made. But I don’t want to do that – the health of the field is obvious from the scientific literature and the extraordinary level of the research presented at the annual meeting. Maybe one could even argue that the field is now at a point of maturity where ISAPP has fulfilled its purpose in helping to establish the credibility of biotic research. So, what is the role of ISAPP in 2024 and beyond?  This of course is something for the board and ISAPP member companies to decide, but I will give some of my thoughts on what makes ISAPP special and why I think it is more important than ever to have such a strong scientific champion representing the field.

The ISAPP agora

The literal meaning of the word agora is “gathering place” or “assembly”, and I think that providing this function has been and continues to be one of the main benefits of ISAPP. The ISAPP agora is physically manifested in the annual meetings and other gatherings, but also goes on throughout the year at the monthly board meetings, which involve all of the academic board members plus the designated industry representatives. The ISAPP agora can be used to reach consensus, to debate topics, to identify new trends, to challenge accepted dogma and to defend rigorous science against unfounded claims. The biotic field can sometimes be a victim of individual researchers or companies making claims that are not supported by rigorous research. ISAPP is entirely focused on scientific excellence and its member companies accept that there are no shortcuts for biotics research in terms of rigour. We realise that the days of saying that it would be too difficult to ‘prove’ a health benefit are over. We still have many more associations than direct evidence of mechanism, but I for one think that is reason for excitement rather than a point of criticism.

Uniting industry and academia

While it is of course important that the board is composed of independent academic scientists, I have always thought that ISAPP benefits by placing scientists from industry and academia on an equal footing, and that everyone recognises the basic truth that it is rare that any discovery in an academic research lab will make a difference to a patient or a consumer without industry being involved. The degree of openness of the scientists from industry partners, the genuine enthusiasm for the field and the sense of common purpose is always obvious. Perhaps people in other industry-academic partnerships experience the same phenomenon, but whether or not they do, the field of biotic research has benefited enormously from this sense of togetherness that I think owes a lot to the existence of ISAPP.

A common language

Scientists, industry, regulators and others can only communicate effectively if we share a common language, and ISAPP has been a leader in providing and updating the definitions of the foundational terms of our scientific discourse; probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics and fermented foods. This function should not be underestimated and although definitions always require ongoing debate and revision, ISAPP hopefully will continue to codify existing and new ‘biotics’ into the future.

A vibrant and talented board

I want to finish by commending the existing and previous board members for their dedication to promoting scientific excellence, the extraordinary amounts of time they volunteer to this cause, and their enormous patience in putting up with me for 15 years. The new leadership team (Executive Director Marla Cunningham, President Maria Marco and vice-President Sarah Lebeer) is outstanding, with the board members representing a who’s who of biotic science and so I leave with the association in the best of hands.

In my time on the board I was lucky to work with many of the giants in our field. If I start naming people I will inevitably omit someone who deserves mention, but I hope no-one will mind if I single out the two individuals who had the most profound influence on me, Todd Klaenhammer and Mary Ellen Sanders. It would take far too long to list the many ways that they have shaped my thinking and so I will simply express my gratitude toward them, and to all my other friends and colleagues among board members past and present. It has been a pleasure, and I look forward with interest to the next 15 years of ISAPP.

hill blog industry

Academics working with industry  

/in featured, ISAPP Science Blog /by Mary Ellen Sanders

by Dr. Colin Hill, APC Microbiome Ireland & School of Microbiology, University College Cork, Ireland

Many scientists have reservations about working with industry.  While characterising it as going over to the dark side might be an overstatement, there is a certain wariness that principles may have to be compromised (in terms of the ambition of the work and the freedom to follow your nose that is the supposed hallmark of ‘pure’ research), dull routine work may have to be performed, and publication in the best journals will be unlikely.  There may also be concerns that students or post-docs working on ‘industry’ projects may suffer from these constraints, which will restrict their career development.  There can also be a perception that the ‘best’ scientists work on fundamental problems, unfettered by the demands of industrial partners or short-term commercial goals.  Some of you reading this opening paragraph may be amused at the simplicity of this stereotyping  – “no one really thinks like that” – but I can assure you that some do, including a younger version of myself.

I have only really worked closely with industry in the last decade.  Before that, I wrote grants which assured potential funding agencies that what I wanted to investigate was incredibly relevant and important, would represent good value for the taxpayers’ investment, but was just a ‘little bit too early’ for industry to take on.  I genuinely believed this for the most part, although part of getting older is learning that fooling myself has always been a much easier task than fooling anyone else.  Nonetheless, I managed to forge a career in science.  I had a reasonable success rate of about one in four or five applications, which still seemed a poor return for the effort involved.  I would take my hard-earned funding and do my best to deliver on the promises I had made.  On occasion, the grants were successful, and we ended up filing a patent or developing a prototype or a process and essentially delivering on the promises made in the grant application.  But all too often I discovered that what we had achieved, or the problem we had solved, was not really the burning issue I had thought it to be, or at least could not be translated for the benefit of society without suitable industry partners.  In essence, we had self-tasked ourselves to solve a problem that no one really needed to be solved (or, at least not yet, or not in the precise manner we had solved it).

Of course, on occasion I was successful in getting truly ‘fundamental’ or ‘basic’ grants which were simply aimed at generating knowledge, and these were absolutely vital in developing new skills and opening up new research areas and possibilities.  However, over the past decade or more, I have begun to work closely with industry partners.  At first, this was driven by changes in funding policy in Ireland which linked scientific excellence to industry relevance – grants had to pass rigorous peer-reviewed scientific assessment, but also had to be validated by an industry partner willing to put skin in the game in the form of co-funding.  This necessitated finding industry partners and identifying a research problem together, before developing a solution.  I hope that now I have a perspective on both aspects of scientific research – often simplistically referred to as basic versus applied research – and I have good news.  Working with industry can be just as scientifically rewarding as not working with industry.

As I have experienced it, working with industry has several obvious advantages.

  1. Relevance. You know the research problem posed is one that genuinely needs solving, and the industrial partner for any solution you may develop is already engaged.
  2. Funding. Once you begin to work with an industry partner, the prospect of getting funding is much higher than in most competitive grant applications and the amount available may be defined by the extent of the problem, not the limit of a particular funding call.
  3. Intellectual capital. Most of the industry people you will be dealing with are also scientists, and they are just as clever, or far cleverer, than you (or me).  They will have defined goals but also have the same scientific curiosity which can be harnessed within the project.
  4. Flexibility. If you have embarked on the project and you find you have gone down a blind alley, it is usually possible to have a discussion with your partners and change the project design.  You don’t have to go back to the funders for permission to adjust the dreaded Gantt chart and ‘deliverables’, or have to justify to grant reviewers why you have gone off track. If a project extension is required you can often simply argue for it, no need to write a new grant and experience the inevitable downtime ‘between funding’.
  5. Urgency. Working with a student or a post-doc on a problem can be exciting, but sometimes a good or a bad result seems important only to the two of you.  It really adds urgency when an industry meeting is looming on the horizon, when you know the funders are directly invested in the outcomes of the experiments, and when the pressure really builds on the team.  In these moments some intense brainstorming and problem-solving can be required, which can create a real sense of excitement within the project and which can be a tremendous learning experience for junior members of the team.
  6. Career development. Most of the students and postdocs in the lab will not end up in academia, nor should they.  It is valuable training for young scientists to have a first-hand exposure to industry-based science so that they can make an informed choice on their next step in their career.

Are there negatives?  Well, honestly, not all industry sponsored research involves cutting edge science.  But if you are completely uninterested in the outcomes then don’t take it on.  What about bias?  Does industry funding create a bias towards positive outcomes?  I genuinely have not found this to be the case.  Reputable industry partners have no interest in biased results, since the company’s reputation is at stake and of course, no one is more invested in the scientific validity of their product than the industry partner.  And given that science is ultimately self-correcting no reputable scientist wants to be associated with misleading outcomes.  Individuals on either side can make mistakes or display bias, but that is no less true in the basic sciences.

The ideal academic-industry relationship recognises that there have to be rewards for both partners.  For both it is really important that the experiments be conducted to the highest possible standards with appropriate controls.  For the academic the right to publish the results in a timely fashion is particularly important when junior scientists are involved and a clear understanding of how results will be disseminated must be reached before the collaboration gets underway.  For the industry partner, it is important that the work stay focused on the agreed goals of the project and not veer off into the ‘nice to know’ rather than ‘need to know’ areas of the research problem.  As in most things, problems can be avoided by having a clear agreement on the goals, methods and publication strategy and having transparent reporting structures. Further, both sides must put effort into maintaining a good working relationship.

Finally, it is not a binary choice – working with industry obviously does not close off any other type of research you may want to perform.  You can still write grants and get funding from other sources.  In fact, I would propose that the ideal research mix requires an element of exploratory science to keep the laboratory fresh and industry-funded science to ensure relevance.  And when in doubt always defer to the great Louis Pasteur, who said “There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science”.