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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cultured breastmilk

TurtleTree Labs Raises $6.2M for its Cell-Cultured Milk

TurtleTree Labs, which is best known for developing cell-based human breastmilk, announced today that it has raised a $6.2 million Pre-A round of funding. Green Monday Ventures, Eat Beyond Global, KBW Ventures, and Verso Capital all participated in the round. This brings the total amount of announced funding for the company to $9.4 million.

While TurtleTree’s breastmilk endeavors may grab most of the headlines, the company is actually working on re-creating a number of different types of milk using cell cultures. As we’ve written previously:

TurtleTree Labs uses cellular agriculture to grow mammary gland cells in a nutrient rich bath that actually lactate milk. This company is initially focusing on re-creating human breast milk, and will follow that up with cow milk. Because they are creating milk in the lab, scientists can alter the milk to give it different attributes like higher or lower fat or cholesterol.

In its press announcement, TurtleTree said it will use the new funds to “accelerate research and production of functional, bioactive proteins and complex sugars found in human milk.”

Both TurtleTree and fellow cultured breastmilk company Biomilq have made headlines throughout 2020. Both companies raised funding rounds in June. And last month, we learned of Biomilq’s plan to use biopsies to create individualized cultured breastmilk.

The ability to create human breastmilk in the lab may sound kind of scary at first, but it has the potential to do a lot of good. Cultured breastmilk doesn’t rely on animal-based dairy like other infant formulas, so it could have an environmental benefit. And cultured breastmilk could also help mothers who for biological, economic or societal reasons, can’t breastfeed their babies as much as they’d like.

There are still regulatory hurdles that must be overcome before we’ll see cultured breastmilk hit the market. But given the investor interest we’ve seen in the space this year, expect to see more technological breakthroughs in 2021.

Biomilq to Use Biopsies to Create Customized Cultured Breastmilk

One of the more intriguing applications for cell cultured food is human breastmilk. Breastfeeding doesn’t come easy for every mother for a variety of biological, societal and economic reasons, so the ability to give a child replicated human breastmilk rather than formula derived from cow’s milk could provide more optimal nutrition for growing babies.

One company working on cultured breastmilk is Biomilq, which earlier this year announced that it had successfully produced human casein and lactose, the predominant components found in breastmilk.

A story from The Guardian last week not only provided an in-depth primer on cultured breastmilk, but also talked about some of the specific technology that Biomilq is using. From that story:

Biomilq’s initial plan is as eye-catching as the product itself: they are going to produce customised breast milk for early adopters, grown from the customer’s own cells. “Moms would go through a fine needle biopsy procedure during their pregnancy,” Strickland explains. “That cell sample would be sent to us so we could start growing it up and producing milk. And then when she’s ready, we can start shipping it to her.”

This type of customization certainly sounds next-level in terms of cell cultured food. You aren’t just getting generic breastmilk from a lab, you’re getting specific breastmilk tailored to you for your baby.

While that is kind of mindblowing, as Biomilq admits to The Guardian, this customization will be very expensive at first. It also has the potential to reinforce inequalities where only those who can afford it will receive any potential advantages from this breakthrough technology. But Biomilq also points out this type of customized breastmilk is less a go-to market business model and more of a way to demonstrate the benefits of its product.

Wresting over ethical issues around cultured human breastmilk is not something we’ll have to deal with in the near term, however. Before we even get to the new set of ethical issues around cultured breastmilk, there are still many regulatory hurdles to overcome before it becomes something available for purchase.

TurtleTree Labs Raises $3.2M Seed Round for its Cultured Human Breast Milk

Turtle Tree Labs, a Singapore-based startup that creates milk from mammalian cells, announced yesterday that it has raised a $3.2 million seed round of funding. Green Monday Ventures, KBW Ventures, CPT Capital, Artesian, and New Luna Ventures all participated in the round.

As we’ve covered previously, TurtleTree Labs uses cellular agriculture to grow mammary gland cells in a nutrient rich bath that actually lactate milk. This company is initially focusing on re-creating human breast milk, and will follow that up with cow milk. Because they are creating milk in the lab, scientists can alter the milk to give it different attributes like higher or lower fat or cholesterol.

When we spoke to TurtleTree at the end of 2019, the company had plans to debut its first glass of human breast milk in Q1 of 2021 and enter the market at the end of 2021. We don’t know if the COVID-19 pandemic has altered any of those plans, but in its funding announcement, TurtleTree said that the Singapore government has been supportive, allowing the company to continue its work apace.

Cultured breast milk seems to be a pretty hot space right now. TurtleTree’s funding comes just a week after BIOMILQ raised $3.5 million for its cultured breast milk solution.

It’s not hard to understand why cultured human breast milk is attracting funding. It has the potential to provide a healthier and more environmentally friendly option for women who are unable to produce enough breast milk on their own because of biological or environmental reasons.

That is still years away, however, as companies like TurtleTree need to continue development of its product and scale up to make its milk more affordable. This new round of funding will definitely help that.

BIOMILQ Raises $3.5M for its Cultured Human Breastmilk

BIOMILQ, which creates cultured human breastmilk in a lab, announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in funding. The round was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from Shazi Visram, founder of Happy Family Brands and healthynest.

We’ve covered BIOMILQ before, writing about the company:

The startup was founded last year by Michelle Egger, a food scientist who previously worked in dairy R&D at General Mills, and Dr. Leila Strickland, a cell biologist who first conceptualized the technology in 2013 while breastfeeding her own daughter. The two met in the Research Triangle and created a patent-pending technology in which they trigger human mammary gland cells, kept alive by a constant stream of nutrients, to lactate. They then collect the resulting breastmilk.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “Breast milk is uniquely suited to the human infant’s nutritional needs and is a live substance with unparalleled immunological and anti-inflammatory properties that protect against a host of illnesses and diseases for both mothers and children.1”

However, breastfeeding isn’t always possible for number of reasons including low milk production, medical challenges, or the ongoing stigmas attached to breastfeeding/pumping in public or work places. BIOMILQ hopes its cultured breastmilk can serve as a healthier and more environmentally friendly option to dairy-based formulas.

BIOMILQ isn’t the only company looking to recreate breastmilk in the lab. Over in Singapore, TurtleTree Labs uses mammary gland cells in a nutrient rich bath to lactate milk. BIOMILQ told The Spoon previously that its technology does not require the nutrient bath and is a “much cleaner technology.”

The company is still very early on and a concept as new as cultured human breastmilk will undoubtedly face scrutiny from regulators, so there is a lot of work yet to be done. BIOMILQ said it will use its new funding to work on production, hire out its team and engage with key stakeholders including families, pediatricians and the breastfeeding community.