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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

growth medium

New Study Claims Cultivated Meat’s Current Path Is Significantly Worse for Environment Than Beef

A new life-cycle analysis by researchers at UC Davis has concluded that the current path of the cultivated meat industry’s commercialization process is potentially orders of magnitude worse for the environment than beef produced through animal agriculture, producing anywhere from 4 to 25 times more CO2 than traditionally produced beef.

The analysis, which at this point has not been peer-reviewed, stands in stark contrast to previous life cycle analysis (LCA) studies that have concluded the environmental impact of cell-cultivated meat – which the study calls “animal cell-based meat” or ACBM – is significantly less than that of traditionally produced beef. However, according to the new research, the problem with previous LCAs is that they do not accurately represent the environmental impact of the current technologies being used in the assumption sets for forecasts within the techno-economic models.

In particular, the study (which was first written about in IFL Science) says the significant environmental impact associated with the purification required of growth medium has not been fully accounted for in previous studies. According to the UC Davis researchers, these previous studies had “high levels of uncertainty in their results and a lack of accounting” for what they believe is the necessary endotoxin removal required for growth media. Accounting for the required purification is essential say the study’s authors, and they believe that the fossil fuel needed for purified growth medium components using the current anticipated commercialization process is anywhere between 3 and 17 times that of the reported “high” scenario for that of traditional boneless beef production.

While the researchers state their study is more accurate than previous LCAs that didn’t accurately model the cost of the production of the purified growth medium, they go on to say that is because the cost built into these techno-economic models is based on current systems being developed for the near-term commercialization of ACBM. They say that the industry would be better off as a whole if some of the key issues were solved before the industry focused on commercial scaling, such as developing a more “environmentally friendly method for endotoxin removal” or “the development of a technological innovation that allows for the use of an inexpensive animal cell growth media produced from agricultural by-products.”.

“Perhaps a focus on advancing these precompetitive scientific advances might lead to a better outcome for all,” they write.

It needs to be stressed again that this paper has not been peer-reviewed, so until it has been evaluated by other subject matter experts in cell ag life cycle analysis in the research community, we should caution against pulling the alarm around the potential impact of the current path towards commercialization. At the same time, the report’s authors, such as Dr. Justin Siegel, have impressive resumes and a history of publication that indicates they likely wouldn’t put their name behind such a controversial conclusion if they didn’t believe it would hold up under scrutiny.

My guess is the conclusion in this study will cause a significant ripple of interest and could have a potentially significant impact on this industry if the findings are considered valid by the broader scientific community. Most of the currently venture-funded cultivated meat startups say they are working on technologies that will lower the costs of cultivated meat, but it’s unclear if any of them have identified ways to remediate the challenges identified by this study’s authors in the current path towards commercialization of ACBM.

We’ll follow the reactions to this study from those in the scientific community – and by extension, the investment community – over the next few months.

Multus Biotechnology Raises $9.5m Series A To Build Growth Media Production Plant

Multus Biotechnology, a UK-based startup, has announced the close of a $9.5 million Series A investment round to build a growth media production facility. The funding includes an equity-free grant of $2.5 million from Innovate UK through the EIC Accelerator. The round was led by Mandi Ventures, with key investors including SOSV, Big Idea Ventures, SynBioVen, and Asahi Kasei Corp.

With new funding in hand, Multus plans to build a growth media production plant in the UK that it hopes will accelerate the cultivated meat industry towards price parity with affordable food-safe growth media at commercial scale. The London-based startup will also accelerate product development in advanced growth media formulations and food-grade raw materials. This week’s funding follows a $2.2 million raise in 2021 and the launch of the company’s first product, Proliferum® M, an all-in-one solution to eliminate the use of foetal bovine serum in cell culture.

Last week, the Spoon discussed the new funding round and the company’s plans with Multus CEO and cofounder Cai Linton.

Tell us about Multus platform.

“At Multus we combine novel ingredient discovery with intelligent formulation design to create high performance growth media suited for the cellular agriculture industry. For example, we use precision fermentation and computational protein design to make growth factors affordable and unlock capabilities in growth media design.”

Like many in this space, Multus is focused on creating animal-free growth media. Tell us about your thinking here and how your platform gets there

Growth factors have historically been a leading cost-driver in serum-free growth media. Another area we are investing heavily is nutrient-rich plant-derived ingredients that are food-safe, affordable and scalable using well-established food-manufacturing practices. These complex ingredients allow us to design high-performance growth media for a variety of cultivated meat-relevant cell types with no animal serum and a clear route to scale. To capture the complexity of a large ingredient library and new cell types and performance objectives, we combine machine learning with high-throughput formulation screening to optimise our growth media efficiently in our MediOp platform.

How did the Multus founding team get started and how did you decide what problem to tackle?

We have taken the challenge of designing affordable, food-safe growth media for the cellular agriculture industry to be an engineering challenge. At Imperial College London, I met my co-founders – Kevin with a background in data-science, Reka with synthetic biology and regenerative medicine, and myself with bioengineering – to combine data science and engineering principles to biology and build enabling technology to accelerate the cellular agriculture industry’s time to market and time to price parity and scale.

There is no silver bullet in growth media. Every aspect from amino acids and growth factors to the formulation optimisation and manufacturing is considered in our interdisciplinary approach. With growth factors, we realised in 2020 that similar proteins are already produced at much larger scale and lower price points than we will ever need in the cellular agriculture industry by companies in the industrial enzyme industry. The difficulty with growth factors is that they inherently have a short half-life due to their function as cell-to-cell signalling molecules in dynamic systems (i.e. humans/animals). When the system is stable (i.e. a large bioreactor), the rapid degradation of growth factors creates an expensive problem. Therefore, we decided to utilise readily scalable and affordable technology in precision fermentation and focus our innovation in computational protein design to create biodesigned growth factors with enhanced potency and prolonged activity.

Can you tell us more about how you are using computational biology and machine learning to solve the problem of growth media.

We also recognise scientific understanding of cell metabolism in the new cell types used in cultivated meat is not sufficient to prompt rational design of growth media, especially when using complex or food-grade raw materials. As such, we have turned growth media optimisation into a data-science problem by capturing large amounts of data on cell behaviour and using computational modelling and machine learning to analyse the data and efficiently find the best combinations of ingredients to maximise performance.

As time goes on, we are accumulating more and more data with different ingredients and different cell types to continue improving the efficiency of our platform and thus the control we have over cell growth. One of the unique benefits of our MediOp platform is that we can efficiently customise growth media to meet multiple objectives in a short time-period. This will be especially important when large-scale production of cultivated meat puts constrains on access to raw materials and rapid re-formulation becomes an important business need Multus will be able to meet.

Tell us your plans post-funding.

To bring our novel ingredient discovery and intelligent formulation design, we are investing in a first-of-its-kind production facility to make food-safe growth media at commercial scale with non-dilutive funding from Innovate UK through the EIC Accelerator. We recently announced we achieved ISO22000 certification in our production lab, a major step forward in becoming the all-in-one solution and preferred supplier of growth media to the cellular agriculture industry. Our facility is being built in the UK and will be able to support several companies scaling from bench to pilot, and pilot to commercial manufacturing.

Meet Three Startups Developing Growth Mediums to Feed Cell-cultured Meat

Culture medium is one of the key building blocks for cell-cultured meat production: In order to grow stem cells into blobs of muscle and fat, you need a nutritious serum to feed and raise the cells.

For most of the nascent industry’s history, fetal bovine serum (or FBS) has been the only viable growth substrate. This reliance on FBS presents a quandary for startups seeking to market their products as ethical and sustainable: The serum is extracted from cow fetuses after slaughtering pregnant cows. FBS is also expensive—an issue for companies seeking to scale down production costs.

To get around the problems of FBS, some of the big names in cell-cultured meat have been developing their own alternative growth mediums. Mosa Meat announced last year that it had converted to a new medium that costs 88 times less than FBS. But there’s also a smattering of growth medium startups developing growth mediums to sell as stand-alone products. Here are some names to know in this space:


1. Multus Media’s Proliferum M serum is formulated with a proprietary mixture of proteins and other ingredients. Designed to facilitate growth for mammalian cells, the serum demonstrates what the company calls universibility: It can support a range of different cell lines.

Multus is currently working with partner companies to test Proliferum M. The company hopes to bring its first product to market later in 2021. (For more on Multus, check out our recent interview with company CEO Cai Linton.)

2. Back of the Yards Algae Sciences manufactures food ingredients like dyes and protein powders—all from algae. The company is experimenting with an algae-based culture medium in their research and development lab, seeking solutions for beef, pork, chicken, and fish cell growth. (And they’ve had some success, as Food Dive reported earlier this year.) Back of the Yards hasn’t yet released details about when their medium might become commercially available.

Seawith, a South Korean company, is also using algae to create culture medium and scaffolding for its cell-based meat products.

3. Biftek is working on a microorganism-based growth medium, although the Turkish startup hasn’t revealed what kinds of microorganisms it’s using. Biftek recently received a financial boost from CULT Food Science, a Canadian investment platform. They’ll use the money to send out culture medium samples to cell-based meat producers and apply for patents.


These aren’t the only serum ideas out there. There’s been some academic research around the use of platelet lysate (a liquid derived from blood platelets) as an alternative culture medium. Agulos Biotech is working on a simulated version of porcine platelet lysate. Driven by the theory that growing muscle cells in blood would produce better-tasting meat, Cultured Blood is developing a substrate of cell-cultured blood.

The cell-cultured meat industry is expected to be worth $248 million by 2026, and many industry leaders believe that cell-based products will reach price parity with conventional meat by then. In order to live up to these expectations, the industry will need to identify sustainable, cost-efficient culture mediums. One of the approaches above might be the key to unlocking more affordable, ethical, cell-based meat.

Future Meat Opens Production Facility, Aims to Sell Cultured Meat in the US by 2022

Future Meat has officially opened what it says is the world’s first production facility for cultured meat. The plant, located in the company’s hometown of Rehovot, Israel, is a big step in accelerating Future Meat’s timeline for getting regulatory approval to sell cultured meat and then actually getting products onto consumers’ plates.

Future Meat says the plant can produce 500 kilograms of cultured meat per day, which is equivalent to roughly 5,000 hamburgers. Those numbers may pale in comparison to traditional meat (this McDonald’s factory produces 5 million burgers every day), but for the extremely nascent cultured meat industry, they make for significant progress. 

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founder and chief scientific officer of Future Meat Technologies, told The Spoon that the new facility is currently processing cultured chicken, pork, and lamb. Beef production will arrive soon. The company’s first official products to come out of the facility will be a cultured chicken breast, chicken fingers, and hamburgers. 

Earlier this year, Future Meat told The Spoon it has been able to decrease the cost of cultured meat production by 1,000x over the last three years. At last check, the company had brought the cost of its cultured chicken breast down to $7.50 USD per quarter-pound serving. It followed that up with news that the production price could drop to $2 within the next 12 to 18 months.

Future Meat’s end products will be a combination of cell-cultured and plant-based protein. Nahmias said that his company’s products are 45 to 75 percent cultured meat, with an edible scaffold made of plant protein. Cell-based protein will replace plant-based elements in future generations of product as the cost of cultured meat continues to decrease.

No technologies out there, he said, use 100 percent cultured meat. “Meat is composed of cells and a three-dimensional protein scaffold that holds the cells together. Companies are either adding the edible scaffold to the cells or adding the cells to the edible scaffold. It is pretty much the same.”

Importantly, Future Meat has also developed a serum-free growth medium for feeding cells. This allows the company to avoid using the controversial fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is both expensive and ethically controversial. According to Nahmias, Future Meat’s medium is made up of a mixture of amino acids, oils, glucose, and naturally occurring hormones. “Removing serum is a critics step in market realization of cultured meat,” he said. “Companies that fail to do that require the slaughter of dozens of calves to grow a single hamburger.” The company’s chicken, lamb, and pork cells are currently growing “in scale” without serum at the production facility.

Future Meat may be the first to open the doors on a production facility for cultured meat, but others won’t be long in coming. Bioprinting startup MeaTech 3D, also based in Israel, says it will have a production facility operational by 2022. San Francisco, California-based Wildtype also opened a production facility this week, though it is focused solely on cultured seafood at the moment and is therefore not a direct competitor to Future Meat. 

Down the line, Future Meat would like to open another production facility, ideally in the United States. For now, Future Meat is working to get regulatory approval here in the U.S., with the goal of selling its products in foodservice venues next year.