Over the next two years, game-changing technologies in microbial fermentation will create opportunities to develop new medical and industrial products, as well as new types of foods and alcoholic beverages. Innovations in microalgae, enzyme technologies, synthetic biotechnology, biomass chemistry, and industrial fermentation will increase yields, improve the quality of products, and reduce the time and costs required for production. We are now entering the post-genomics era when many genomes of fungi, plants, and microorganisms have been sequenced. This enables the selection of markers and improved cellular transformation strategies. In addition, as part of the circular economy movement, microbial fermentation technology can offer ways to utilise food waste as raw materials to transform processes towards environmentally friendly alternatives for medical-grade products.
Recent innovations in cell and gene therapy, such as the advances related to CAR-T, stem cells, siRNA, oligonucleotides, gene editing, and viral transfections are helping to move cell and gene therapies from clinical trials into practice. Recent trials of CAR-T therapy have confirmed an increase in both potency and targeting when combining chimeras with CART-T cells. For gene editing techniques, even though CRISPR, TALENs and Zinc Fingers are established technologies, recent advances in SSRs, ZFNs and meganucleases are allowing faster multiplexing and easier introduction of multiple genes into cells. Such processes have already allowed the generation of more potent anti-cancer T cells. Lastly, recent innovations in electroporation has increased yields and reduced the cost of viral vector manufacturing by developing gentler methods of permeabilizing cell the mechanical and chemical disruption.
Over the next two years, game-changing technologies in plant proteins, mycoproteins, probiotics, and alternative functional ingredients will help the food and beverage industry make progress towards healthier high-protein, vegan, and dairy-free alternatives. New innovations in nanoencapsulation technologies have extended the shelf-life of products containing probiotics and encapsulated antioxidants, both of which are often difficult to integrate into functional foods. Customer demands for food and beverage producers to reduce food waste and help close the circular economy loop are increasing. Meeting such demands has created new business opportunities in using food surplus, upcycled, and rescued ingredients into sustainable alcoholic beverages, snacks, and bio-materials packaging. Lastly, increasing growth in demand for alternative sources of proteins, such as pea protein and soy protein, is creating new opportunities in the fortified dairy-free products industries, including new types of non-dairy milks, yoghurts, and cheeses.
Over the past two years, the demand for personalised nutrition and home delivery of healthier and more sustainable food has grown significantly. Meeting this demand may be challenging, as the costs associated with the conventional production of fresh meals are higher, requiring fresh ingredients, more equipment, and fast last-mile delivery of meals to customers. However, the recent emergence of portable “ghost kitchen” businesses in combination with smaller autonomous last-mile delivery vehicles and drones for high-payload delivery have created opportunities to reduce both production and delivery costs and create branches with smaller kitchens across the catchment area. In addition, smarter portable chilling systems—such as pressure-injected cyclopentane foam—and heating systems—such as tray-sized inductive heating plates—allow fresh meals to be maintained at appropriate temperatures on their journey from the kitchen’s tray stack to the customer’s plate.
Speech Virtual Assistants (VA) are systems that enable conversational interactions between a human and computer enabled by AI and other advanced technologies. These systems have already proven effective as a hands-free method for requesting information and obtaining answers to simple queries. However, they also have potential as a clinical diagnostic tool, as patterns of speech and changes in speech are detectable with AI monitoring. Such systems could be used detect changes in a patient’s speech patterns over time, track the progression of cognitive conditions such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, and measure a patient’s improvement during a speech therapy program.
Computer image recognition applied to phone-captured images is advancing the state-of-the-art and enabling the remote diagnosis of skin conditions, such as carcinomas, rashes, and diabetic wounds. Deep learning AI neural networks trained to recognize these conditions and allow the patient to monitor their own condition with greater convenience and frequency. This technology is also being deployed in a variety of other industries to automate and improve visual inspection processes.
