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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Seawith

These Four Startups Are Growing Animal-free Scaffolds for Cell-Cultured Meat

It’s one thing to grow an amorphous blob of muscle or fat cells in a bioreactor—and another thing to recreate the structure of animal tissue. In order to make a complex product like a steak or a salmon fillet, cell-cultured meat producers need to provide their stem cells with a scaffold to grow on.

In nature, growing stem cells are housed within a structure of proteins and polysaccharides called the extracellular matrix. The cells’ interaction with this environment guides the way that they adhere, differentiate, and migrate.

Both cell-based meat manufacturers and business-to-business suppliers in the industry are experimenting with different scaffolding materials that can mimic the extracellular matrix. Below, we’ll discuss some scaffolding solutions and the startups that are exploring them.

You might notice that all of the materials we mention are animal-free—a significant development as alternative meat companies seek to reduce their dependence on animal inputs.


1. DaNAgreen is developing extracellular matrix stand-ins for both clinical and food applications. On its website, the South Korean startup describes Protinet™-P, its scaffolding product for cell-cultured meat manufacturing, as “a food that incubates food.” Protinet™-P scaffolds are completely edible, as they’re made from isolated plant proteins.

DanNAgreen currently offers its products in custom sizes and shapes. The company plans to spend the next few years scaling up production.

2. Seawith, a cell-cultured meat company also based in South Korea, is using algae-based scaffolds to grow its products. Along with being nutrient-rich, algae is relatively easy and inexpensive to grow. In The Spoon’s recent interview with Seawith, we learned that the company credits its algae scaffolding with the development of thicker cell-based steaks.

The company hopes to start selling its cell-cultured meat products to restaurants by 2023, though the team is awaiting regulatory decisions from the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

3. Excell is exploring the use of fungal mycelium as a scaffolding substrate. Mycelium contains the polymer chitin, which can be made to mimic some of the polysaccharides found in the natural extracellular matrix. Some fungi also have a meaty taste and texture, so it’s possible that mycelium-based substrates could enhance the sensory experience of eating cell-cultured meat.

Excell is currently offering mycelium scaffolding culture kits to researchers and product developers, and collecting feedback on how its products perform.

4. Matrix Meats of Ohio is approaching the challenge in a different way. The company uses an electrospinning technique to build nanofiber scaffolds. As FoodNavigator has reported, Matrix’s scaffolds can be made of a combination of different materials, which could allow cell-based meat producers to grow cultured muscles and fats together on a single structure.

Matrix works directly with cell-cultured meat startups to develop custom scaffolding solutions for their products. Client companies can control the scaffolding material, fiber size, and other factors.

These innovations with plant and fungi-based scaffolds could just be the start. Animal-derived collagen has been widely studied as a cellular scaffold material (which makes sense, as collagen is one of the proteins found in the natural extracellular matrix)—and it may be possible to make animal collagen scaffolds without using actual animals. Researchers have managed to produce animal collagen using gene-edited tobacco plants, and recombinant collagen produced by bacteria and yeast also look promising.

Advancements in animal-free scaffolding should help cell-cultured meat producers to cut costs and reduce their environmental impacts. (And this isn’t just a hypothetical: With its algae scaffold, DaNAgreen has been able to produce cell-based steaks at near price-parity with conventional products.) We’re likely to see much more innovation in the field as cell-cultured companies explore hybrid production options.

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.

South Korea: Seawith Uses Algae for Serum and Scaffolding in Cultured Meat

It’s been a banner year so far for cultured meat. In addition to all of the funding that’s been flowing into the space since the start of 2021, there is also a growing number of startups from around the world attacking the issues of creating cell-based meat in unique ways.

The latest such startup to come to our attention is South Korea’s Seawith, which is leveraging algae to differentiate itself from other cultured meat players. The company uses algae to replace the fetal bovine serum (FBS) that has historically been used as a growth medium for cells. FBS is expensive and controversial, so most cell-based meat startups we cover are developing technologies that don’t require it. But Seawith is also using algae as a scaffolding to grow meat, which the company says yields thicker “cuts” of meat.

Following is a brief Q&A conducted via email with Heejae Lee, CTO of Seawith, who provides a little more insight into the company and what it is creating. Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

1.) What makes Seawith different from other cell-based meat companies?
Seawith has the distinction of making the world’s first perfect steak at a price similar to slaughter meat. Based on algae engineering technology, it has replaced most of the bovine serum, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the cost of culturing meat, and the cell culture scaffold technology can make cultured meat thicker than 1cm.

2.) What makes algae so useful in creating cell-based meat?
The key principle of cultured meat is that one muscle cell takes nutrients and synthesizes them to make large meat. Algae is rich enough to be used as a nutritional supplement, which allows efficient cell culture by supplying it to cells. Also, algae are one of the most abundant resources on Earth, and they have the advantage of being cheap and available everywhere because they can grow anywhere with water and sunlight.

3.) Where are you at with your product right now?
We just finished our research and held a cultured meat tasting event. Cultured meat made with Korean bovine cells was evaluated well by attendees, who said it had the taste and aroma of beef, and the texture of meat could be seen. Currently, it is a muscle-only culture, but we are preparing various features such as taste of fat cells. We are preparing to get permission to produce enough to supply large quantities of products to restaurants by 2023.

4.) What types of cell-based meat will you be creating?
Seawith is making beef steak. There are many different types of meat, but the reason why we are making
difficult steaks is that only the technology we have can implement them. After perfecting the texture of muscle tissue, we plan to develop various meat products such as chicken, pig, and fish as well as meat products and animal feed.

5.) What is your timeline to bring your product to market?
We are currently discussing with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety to make a trial sale in Korea with the aim of
launching a restaurant at the end of 2022. To this end, we are planning an urban cultured meat factory and will introduce a minimum production model by 2021. From 2023, we are preparing for local tasting event and product launch in different locations such as North America and Singapore.