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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Integriculture

Integriculture Raises $7M to Build Cell Ag Infrastructure Platform for Scaling Cell Cultured Meat Production

This week Japan-based startup Integriculture announced they had raised $7 million to accelerate its efforts to build a cellular agriculture infrastructure platform to scale cell-cultured meat production.

Integriculture, which grew out of founder Yuki Hanyu’s ShojinMeat Project – an early effort to create a DIY cell-cultured meat community – is creating an end-to-end cell-cultured meat production system in CulNet. According to Integriculture, CulNet is a framework concept that incorporates all the steps and related technology required for the cell-cultured meat production process, from the creation of culture medium to processing to the end-product bioreactor.

Integriculture outlined the various pieces of the CulNet platform in June of 2021 when they announced the CulNet Consortium:

  • Standardized culture media: Recipes that are fundamentally different from the existing media (basal media). Basal media are the raw material for all cultured cell products, and a different type is required for each kind (food, material, medical, etc.).
  • CulNet SystemTM hardware: Hardware that lets people use the CulNet SystemTM across a broad spectrum of uses, whether it’s in mass production or just at home.
  • Product bioreactors: Bioreactors that are used to make things like the products’ edible parts. We estimate that a variety of animals used as agricultural products will be a source for the cells.
  • Cell product processing: The process control that is needed to meet the products’ processing and safety requirements (cell components and culture supernatant).
  • Cell sources: The process that is used to extract and culture cells from livestock and fishery resources and the systems that enable the whole sequence of processes to be completed right where the cell sources are produced—tailoring them to their intended use, source animal species, etc.

For the last couple of years, Integriculture has made it clear it hoped to have a cell-cultured meat industry build up around its CulNet concept, and with this recent funding, it looks like it definitely has momentum for this. However, one thing I found curious in this latest announcement was this sentence: “The proprietary CulNet System is capable of inexpensively culturing animal cells of all types and species without exogenous growth factors.”

When Integriculture announced the CulNet consortium last June, it sounded as if the company was essentially open-sourcing its technology for collaboration and development. In the latest announcement, this use of the word proprietary – and complete lack of any mention of the Consortium – makes me wonder if Integriculture is pulling back a bit and putting up guardrails around its intellectual properrty. If you’re an investor that would certainly be attractive since there is lots of money to be made in hardware, consumables, services, and technology licensing in a future multi-billion dollar industry if you own a significant amount of the IP.

Beyond the company’s designs on becoming a critical cell-cultured meat infrastructure provider, they also are looking to create their own consumer-facing product in cell-cultured foie gras. The product, which Hanyu said will be a hybrid product that combines both cell-cultured meat and plant-based components, is now expected to be introduced later this year.

Air Protein, GOOD Meat, IntegriCulture Among the Semifinalists for XPRIZE’s Alt-Protein Competition

Nonprofit XPRIZE has announced 28 semifinalists teams that will move forward in the Feed the Next Billion competition. The multi-year competition will support companies developing compelling chicken and fish alternatives that replicate or outperform the real thing in terms of nutrition, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and taste and texture. 

The competition, first announced at the end of 2020, is being conducted in partnership with ASPIRE, the project management arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). Grand-prize winners will not be chosen until 2024. when multiple winners will collectively receive $15 million.

For now, the 28 finalists chosen to continue the competition will have the next year to work with the competition, ASPIRE, and The Tony Robbins Foundation to develop the first iterations of their products. Up to 10 finalist teams will be chosen towards the end of 2022 and will split a “milestone award” of $2.5 million. 

Those 10 finalists will have one last round of competition where they will need to create “at least twenty-five cuts of structured chicken breast or fish fillet analogs of 115 gram or four ounce that replicate the sensory properties, versatility, and nutritional profile of conventional chicken or fish.” One grand prize winner will receive $7 million, with second- and third-place winners getting $2 million and $1 million, respectively.

The 28 finalists chosen this week represent all three pillars of alternative protein: plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation. Some of these companies are better known than others. Eat Just’s GOOD Meat, for example, is the only company in the world that has regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat (in Singapore). MeatOurFuture, on the other hand, is a public-private partnership that is known primarily in South Africa at this point. Others, including plant-based seafood company Brew51 from India, Japan’s IntegriCulture, and Air Protein, are all at various stages of development in terms of their products.

You can read the full list of companies, which span 14 different countries, here.

XPRIZE’s Feed the Next Billion competition was developed in response to the organization’s Future of Food Impact Roadmap, where the organization pinpointed 12 “breakthrough opportunities” that could help build a better food system. Alt-protein is a major area.

No one company developing alternative proteins has yet proven their technology and/or ingredients can feed the next billion. There remain many, many questions around the nutrition of products, the cost of making them, and, for some, whether or not they can ever really be produced at that scale. XPRIZE’s competition will no doubt go some ways towards answering those questions over the next few years.  

Japan’s CulNet Consortium, an ‘Open Innovation Platform’ for Cell-Based Meat, Officially Launches

Last week a group of Japan-based companies announced the official launch of the CulNet Consortium, an open innovation platform for the development of cell-cultured meat in Japan and beyond. The announcement, made by Japan cell-based meat startup IntegriCulture, details the member companies and outlines the activities of the group.

The group’s platform is centered around an open innovation framework developed by IntegriCulture, one of Japan’s most visible and active startups in cellular agriculture. The Uni-CulNet framework and the Consortium plans were originally announced in May of 2020, when IntegriCulture described the framework as “a standardized cellular agriculture infrastructure” that “rapidly establishes the foundation for democratized cellular agriculture.”

The consortium’s member companies plan to cooperate across five different areas to help accelerate the sector’s overall advancement: cell source, culture medium, CulNet hardware, product bioreactor, and product processing.

From the release:

  • Standardized culture media: Recipes that are fundamentally different from the existing media (basal media). Basal media are the raw material for all cultured cell products, and a different type is required for each kind (food, material, medical, etc.).
  • CulNet SystemTM hardware: Hardware that lets people use the CulNet SystemTM across a broad spectrum of uses, whether it’s in mass production or just at home.
  • Product bioreactors: Bioreactors that are used to make things like the products’ edible parts. We estimate that a variety of animals used as agricultural products will be a source for the cells.
  • Cell product processing: The process control that is needed to meet the products’ processing and safety requirements (cell components and culture supernatant).
  • Cell sources: The process that is used to extract and culture cells from livestock and fishery resources and the systems that enable the whole sequence of processes to be completed right where the cell sources are produced—tailoring them to their intended use, source animal species, etc.

It’s not surprising IntegriCulture and its founder Yuki Hanyu are a driving force behind a standardization push around open innovation. Hanyu has been the most visible evangelist for cell-based meat in Japan over the last few years, and his company’s ethos for open innovation was signaled by the efforts he put into building a DIY cultured meat initiative with the Shojinmeat project.

The CulNet Consortium isn’t the only industry organization gaining momentum as the cell-based meat industry matures. The Alliance for Meat, Poultry & Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), an industry group focused on market education and industry advocacy, just announced an eighth member, Orbillion Bio, who joins Eat Just, Upside and Blue Nalu, among others. AMPS has been working to influence US policy to support the cultured meat industry, including a recent joint industry letter to the FDA after its call for input into the labeling framework for cell-based meat.

Meat-Tech 3D Closes $7M Funding Round, Files for IPO

Israeli food tech company Meat-Tech 3D officially announced yesterday that it had closed a $7 million funding round for its cultured meat production technologies that integrate 3D printing. The round was led by Psagot Provident and Pension Funds with participation from the Mor investment house as well as private investors.

The funding announcement comes about one week after Meat-Tech 3D said it had started the process for an IPO in the U.S. (The company is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange already.)

At this point, Meat-Tech 3D is more focused on the B2B realm, with plans to license its technology — a combination of cell-cultured meat processing and 3D printing — to alt-meat producers, rather than creating its own line of products. 

That technology and process involves growing cells in bioreactors then turning the different cell types (e.g., muscle, fat) into inks that get bioprinted to mimic a specific cut of meat. The 3D-printed structures are then placed in incubators where they grow before being frozen and packaged for shipping. The company successfully printed a piece of beef via this method.

Scale, however, is what Meat-Tech 3D ultimately wants to achieve. And as we’ve discussed before, there’s a long trek towards cultured meat at scale, and a big difference between a successful prototype and having an actual product widely available.

Meat-Tech isn’t the only cell-based meat company using 3D printing. At the recent Smart Kitchen Summit, NovaMeat showed off it’s 3D printer by making a “steak” live during the show. And earlier this year, Redefine Meat said it had achieved the ability to 3D print plant-based steaks using industrial-level technology.

Meat-Tech CEO Sharon Fima said in today’s press release that the new funds will enable the company to progress with its acquisition of cultured meat company Peace of Meat as well as continuing to build out R&D.

The company has not yet provided a timeframe for the IPO. 

Singapore’s Shiok Meats Raises $12.6M in Series A Funding

Cell-based seafood maker Shiok Meats announced today it has raised $12.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Aqua-Spark, an investment fund focused on sustainable aquaculture. SEEDS Capital, Real Tech Fund, Irongrey, and several others also participated in the round, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. This brings Shiok Meats’ total funding so far to $20.2 million.

Shiok Meats said it will put the new funds towards building its commercial pilot plant, from which the company plans to launch its minced shrimp product in 2022. 

Shrimp is one of the most widely consumed seafood types in the world. For now, at least, Shiok Meats says it is the only company in the world creating a cell-based version that’s grown outside the animal. The company’s process involves isolating stem cells from the shrimp then growing them inside nutrient-rich bioreactors. 

It joins a growing list of cell-based protein producers that have raised funds over the last year, including Blue Nalu, Good Catch, and Wild Type.

For all of these companies, price remains a major hurdle to getting products to market: cell-based protein is simply an expensive process right now that makes it impossible to get products to price parity with traditional seafood offerings. On its own website, Shiok meats notes that a limited production scale is in part responsible for the high costs of its cell-based shrimp. Scaling up production will help the company bring down costs.

Shiok recently partnered with IntegriCulture to use the latter’s CultNet System to create shrimp cell cultures. Doing so brings down the overall cost of cell-based shrimp production, since it doesn’t require expensive animal serums normally used for the process. 

Shiok did a first public taste testing of cell-based shrimp dumplings last year, to positive reviews. The rest of us will have to wait a little longer. The company’s initial products will be frozen cell-based shrimp meat for dumplings and other shrimp-based dishes. In the coming years, the company also plans to launch shrimp flavoring pastes and powders, fully formed 3D shrimp, and cell-based lobster and crab products.

Mosa Meat Raises $55M for Cell-Based Burgers

Mosa Meat, the Netherlands-based company known for creating the world’s first lab-grown hamburger, announced today it has raised $55 million as part of a larger Series B round. The round was led by Blue Horizon Ventures with participation from Bell Food Group, M Ventures, and others. 

Earlier this year, the company said it had achieved a more than 80x reduction in the cost of the growth medium it uses for its lab-grown meat. That’s one heck of a reduction, considering the Mosa Meat’s original hamburger cost $325,000. The company also opened a new pilot production plant.

Especially noteworthy is that in 2019, Mosa Meat successfully removed Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), which is both expensive and ethically controversial, from its growth medium. According to a company blog post from July, removing FBS from the medium helped bring down overall costs, which in turn gets Mosa Meat closer to achieving price parity with traditional meat. Reaching that price parity will be crucial to selling the average consumer on the idea of eating burgers and other meats grown in a lab. Achieving the right texture and taste are also critical components for cell-based meat products.

The cell-based meat category has seen a huge uptick in investment over the last several months, and for more than just burgers. IntegriCulture, a company making lab-grown foie gras, raised $7.4 million in May and got a $2.2 million grant in August. BlueNalu raised $20 million in February for its cell-based seafood. Overall, the cell-based meat category has received more than $290 million in investment for 2020.

Mosa Meat says it will use its new funds to extend its current pilot production facility, expand its team, and develop an industrial-sized production line. It will also “introduce delicious cultivated beef to consumers,” though no specific date for that is set. For now, the company said it will work with European regulators to demonstrate the safety of cell-based meat and get regulatory approval to “serve consumers in Europe who are craving change.”

Australian Company Vow Is Taste Testing Cell-based Kangaroo and Other Cultured Meats

Cell-based meat may be some time away from the grocery aisle, but that hasn’t stopped companies all over the world from trying to raise animal protein without the actual animal. Think cell-based beef, pork, and seafood, and, now, kangaroo and alpaca. 

The latter two on that list come courtesy of a Sydney, Austraila-based company called Vow, which today announced a recent “culinary demonstration” of its “multi-species meat platform.” Working with Australian chefs Neil Perry Corey Costelloe, Vow in August held a recent event showing off six of its cell-based meat types: goat, pork kangaroo, rabbit, lamb, and alpaca. All dishes came from Vow’s cell library (more on that below).

On its website, Vow says it takes just six weeks to get from animal cell to plated product. The company first takes and nourishes the animal cells, which grow in cultivators and form fat, tissue, and muscle just as they would if growing inside the animal.  

There are a couple things that set Vow apart from other companies working in the cell-based meat space. First is the sheer selection of meat Vow aims to eventually offer the buying public. Kangaroo and alpaca are unconventional enough when it comes to cultured meat, but Vow has also name-dropped zebra, yak, and other animals in the past. 

This isn’t just a gimmick to grow weird meat for the “wow” factor. Speaking recently to Food Navigator, Vow’s co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Tim Noakesmith pointed to the “uncanny valley” problem meat alternatives can encounter: that giving people a product they are used to but with a slight variation (e.g., texture, aftertaste) will garner a negative reaction.

“If we offer them something new, a new meat via a new format and give them a completely different experience, there won’t be this prior comparison [or the instinct to reject the new experience],” he told Food Navigator.

True to that idea, Vow keeps a “cell library” of different cells its scoured from all corners of the earth, which is the other factor setting it apart from others in the cultured meat space. The company says there are “hundreds upon hundreds of possible combinations” for future meat.

Vow co-founder and CEO George Peppou said in today’s press release that the recent taste testing event represented a milestone that “demonstrates we can grow the cells of any animal, not just those we can farm.”

Thus far, Integriculture’s cell-based foie gras and BlueNalu’s crustaceans are about as exotic as it’s gotten for cultured meat. So Vow’s recent unveiling of its new dishes is definitely a milestone for the cell-baed meat sector, which has raised around $290 million so far in 2020.

Vow says it is currently hiring chefs, food scientists, and sensory experts to help develop new products. For now, the company is focused on markets in the Asia-Pacific region. 

IntegriCulture Awarded $2.2 Million Grant to Build New Commercial Cell Ag Facility

Yesterday, Integriculture was awarded a $2.2 million dollar grant by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), a part of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that supports high-risk technologies that aim to resolve social issues. 

NEDO awarded a total ¥5.77 billion ( $54.7 million USD)  to eight Japanese start-ups. With each grant comes a spot in NEDO’s Product Commercialization Alliance (PCA) program, an accelerator for start-ups expected to achieve continuous sales within three years.

IntegriCulture’s will use the money for a commercial production site for cellular agriculture projects. Earlier this year the company outlined the specifics of its CultNet System, a general-purpose, large-scale cell culture technology. The system is intended to mimic the cell-to-cell communication that happens in vivo. The grow cells (muscle, fat, connective tissue) and cells that produce growth factors in adjacent bioreactors. In theory, the technology makes it possible to culture any type of animal cell in large quantities.

The coming production site will make it possible to scale, automate and integrate quality controls into the CultNet System, according to a press release from IntegriCulture. Ultimately, the site will be the launching pad commercial scale cellular ag projects possible, starting with IntegriCulture’s own cultured foie gras expected to be in restaurants by 2021.

The PCA grant comes just after Integriculture raised a ¥800 million (~$7.4 million USD) Series A round earlier this Spring to further development of its cell-based meat and also for building the company’s first commercial-scale bioreactor.

But the goal of the CultNet System was never to exclusively produce IntegriCulture products. CEO Yuki Hanyu’s plan is to create an infrastructure that IntegriCulture clients from every sector—food, supplements, cosmetics, materials—could use to to develop and execute cell-based projects. 

Democratization of cellular agriculture has always been at the heart of Hanyu’s work. IntegriCulture was born out of the DIY cultured meat community he founded in 2015 called the Shojinmeat Project. Shojinmeat offers a step-by-guide for hobbyists who want to culture meat at home. And since IntegriCulture’s commercial scale foie gras is still a few years off, the fastest way to access to cultured meat might be growing it yourself.  

New Age Meats Raises Another $2M for Cell-Based Pork

Cultivated meat startup New Age Meats (NAM) announced today it has raised a $2 million seed extension round led by TechU Ventures. The round follows the NAM’s $2.7 million seed round from earlier this year and brings the company’s total funding to $5 million.

The Berkeley, CA company is currently developing a cell-based pork sausage and says the new funds will go towards this development. In particular, that includes bringing the price point of its product down. 

NAM will also use the funds to further build out its Food Science department, which it says is focused on getting the key attributes — taste, smell, texture, etc. — of its cell-based pork as close to the real thing as possible. On that note, the company held a taste test for its pork back in 2018 and received largely positive reviews. 

Another key element to NAM’s methods is its use of automation to optimize bioreactors and essentially grow its meat faster. Part of the new funding will go towards implementing more of this automation, as well as robotics, to speed up both the research and development processes. 

Investment in cell-based meat has already reached over $1 billion in 2020 so far, which is almost double what it was for all of 2019. Cell-based meat makes up a small-but-significant portion of that investment, and NAM’s seed extension follows funding news from BlueNalu, Integriculture, and others. 

Though the company didn’t provide a timeframe, NAM said today it plans to eventually build out a pilot facility, scale product development and production, and bring its first products to market.

As Cell-Based Protein Becomes a Reality, What to Call it Gets Increasingly Important

Last week we briefly covered news about a Rutgers study that found “cell-based” the best descriptor for lab-grown seafood products. Further thought and reading on the matter leads me to believe the study’s findings have implications for labeling across all of the cell-based protein space, not just seafood.

Here’s a quick recap: A new study by Rutgers in the Journal of Food Science recommends “Companies seeking to commercialize seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish should use the term ‘cell-based’ on product labels.”

The study, commissioned by cell-based seafood company BlueNalu, claims to be the first of its kind evaluating how to label alternative seafood products in a way that both appeals to consumers and meets regulatory requirements around product naming. The study was done by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers-New Brunswick’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. He noted this week that participants in the study were able to tell the label “cell-based” apart from ones like “wild caught” or “farm raised,” and that those participants still believed the cell-based products were as nutritious as the others. 

Other names tested in the study were “cell-cultured seafood” and “cultivated seafood,” as well as phrases like “cultivated from the cells of ____” and “grown directly from the cells of ____.”

It’s not hard to understand why “cell-based seafood” resonates the most with consumers. The above phrases lack the kind of concise description needed for food products, and terms like “cultivated seafood” are rather muddy in terms of describing what goes into making the product. 

This question of labeling is only going to get bigger as cell-based proteins move further from concept and into a culinary reality for average consumers. We’ve already seen this play out to some degree with plant-based proteins. About a year ago, large meat corporations were pushing hard to ban their plant-based counterparts from using words like “burgers” and “sausages” on packaging. As we wrote previously, “Big Meat trying to quash alterna-meats’ popularity by telling companies how they can or can’t label themselves feels protectionist and ineffective, not to mention desperate, at this point.” 

And that was before the pandemic. Since COVID-19 hit and shed an uncomfortably bright light on issues in traditional meat production, demand for alternative proteins has been through the roof. Just this week, investment network FAIRR released a report stating investment in alt-protein for the first half of 2020 is nearly double the amount for all of 2019. That includes cell-based protein.

Whether Big Seafood pushes back on labeling now that more cell-based seafood is coming to market remains to be seen. It will certainly have a lot of opponents if it does. BlueNalu just announced a new facility designed for commercial production of its alt-seafood products. Wild Type raised a $12.5 million Series A round last year for its cultured salmon, and Shiok Meats just partnered with Integriculture to scale up production of lab-grown shrimp. And those are only the seafood-focused players in the cell-cultured protein space.

Big Seafood aside, effective labeling of all these products — and all cell-based protein products, really — will be key to appealing to new consumers who may not have previously known about cell-based meat and dairy, and that it’s just as nutritious as the real deal. When it comes to finding a name for these alt-protein items, that could be the most difficult and most rewarding challenge companies face.  

IntegriCulture and Shiok Meats Partner to Scale Up Production of Lab-Grown Shrimp

Cell-based meat companies Integriculture and Shiok Meats announced this week that they have officially entered into a collaboration to scale up production of the latter’s cell-based shrimp, according to Vegconomist.

For the partnership, Integriculture will provide its CultNet System, which allows other businesses to culture their own animal tissues. In this case, Shiok Meats will use the CultNet System to create shrimp cell cultures. Doing so would bring the overall cost of producing lab-grown shrimp down because the system doesn’t require animal serums, which are extremely expensive, not to mention controversial.

Dr. Sandhya Sriram, co-founder of Shiok Meats, told Vegconomist that at this point, most cell-ag companies are looking for alternatives to serum, as animal serums are “neither ethical nor sustainable.” 

IntegriCulture’s CultNet System lets cell-based meat produce bypass animal serums altogether. (This democratization of meat production is one of the reasons the company landed on our Food Tech 25 list for this year.)

Unfortunately, your average consumer won’t be able to taste this cell-based shrimp yet. The companies did not give a timeline for this cell-based shrimp, and cell-based meat in general is still some time away from landing in the consumer market. IntegriCulture has said it will launch its first product, a cell-based foie gras, in 2021. Shiok Meats did its first public taste testing, of its cell-based shrimp dumplings in the spring of 2019, but the company is still most likely three to five years out from commercializing anything.

Both companies recently raised money. Integriculture raised $7.4 million this past May. Shiok Meats raised $3 million in bridge funding at the end of June.

The cultured meat and cell-ag space overall has seen much activity of late in terms of both new funding and expanding production. Memphis Meats raised $161 million at the beginning of 2020, doubling global investment in cultured meat. BlueNalu announced in June it will expand its facilities to bring cell-based seafood to test markets. Both Turtle Tree Labs and BIOMILQ have raised money for their cultured human breastmilk. 

While we’re still a ways away from grabbing cell-based meat off our grocery store shelves (or growing it at home), the flurry of new developments and funding news in this space make clear that cell-based ag is less the stuff science fiction now and inching closer to reality.

IntegriCulture Raises $7.4M for Cell-based Meat Development

Cellular agriculture startup Integriculture has raised a ¥800 million (~$7.4 million USD) Series A round to further the development of its cell-based meat, according to AgFunder News. The round was led by AgFunder, Beyond Next Ventures, Hiroshima Ventures, Hiroshima Venture Capital, NH Foods, Real Tech Fund, and VU Venture Partners. It also included participation from several other investors, including Caygan Capital CEO Naruhisa Nakagawa. This brings IntegriCulture’s total funding to date to ¥1.1 billion, or about $10.2 million USD.

The company will use the new funds for further research and development around its cell-based meat and also for building a production facility and the company’s first commercial-scale bioreactor. 

Integriculture’s first edible product will be its cell-based foie gras, which is grown in a bioreactor rather than in, well, an animal, thereby eliminating the ethical issues surrounding foie gras. Last year, company CEO Yuki Hanyu told my colleague Catherine Lamb that it plans to launch the cultured liver in restaurants by 2021 and in retail by 2023.

Hanyu is also the founder of DIY cultured meat community Shojinmeat which he started with the idea of “democratizing meat.” The aim was to give every household the ability to grow their own cultured meat in their own homes. IntegriCulture spun out from Shojinmeat in 2015. IntegriCulture’s new CulNet system, which it unveiled earlier this month, is geared towards that, allowing businesses and even (very ambitious) individuals to culture their own animal tissue.

While that sounds a little more involved than, say, growing a garden or even making your own yeast at home, it’s possible the pandemic will accelerate this idea of democratizing meat. 

In the future, IntegriCulture hopes its CulNet system will be able to culture any type of animal cell, so that they can branch out into other types of alt-meat production and even move into non-food industries like medical and skincare.