• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

UPSIDE Foods Develops Animal-Free Cell Growth Medium

by Camille Bond
December 15, 2021December 15, 2021Filed under:
  • Alternative Protein
  • Cultured Meat
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

If you want to grow a cell-based steak, you’ll need a good growth medium — a nutrient-rich soup that feeds the cells as they proliferate. We’ve written previously about the cell-based meat industry’s push to ditch fetal bovine serum, a growth medium extracted from cow fetuses, and develop animal-free alternatives. By cutting animal inputs, companies can cut the costs of cell-cultivated meats, as well as the products’ environmental footprints.

Californian cell-based startup UPSIDE Foods switched away from fetal bovine serum years ago, and set a research and development team to the task of developing an alternative medium with zero animal inputs. Last week, the company announced that it has achieved that milestone, converting to an animal-free medium.

“Since day one, we knew that developing animal component-free cell feed would be crucial to fully realizing our vision of meat that’s better for the planet and its inhabitants,” company founder and CEO Dr. Uma Valeti said in a press release. “Cell feed is among the biggest drivers of cost and environmental footprint for the cultivated meat industry, and optimizing it is key to maximizing our positive impact. Our ultimate goal is to remove animals from our meat production process entirely.”

UPSIDE has used its animal-free medium to grow cell-cultivated chicken nuggets and hot dogs, demonstrating the versatility of the substrate. The company plans to grow all of its products with the new medium in future.

The achievement will help UPSIDE to scale as the company moves toward commercialization. Last month, the company unveiled its new production and development facility in Emeryville, Calif. The facility can produce 50,000 pounds of meat per year, and the company plans to boost that capacity to 400,000 pounds over time. Commercialization is still on hold as the industry waits for the USDA and FDA to create a regulatory framework — but with lower costs and increased capacity, UPSIDE is poised to take its products to the public.


Related

A Breakdown of Cell-Based Meat’s Big Funding Quarter

This is the web version of our Future Food newsletter. Sign up for the best news and analysis of the alternative protein market. There has been a lot of funding activity in the cultured meat space since the start of the year -- and we're only three months in! Anyway,…

BioBetter is Turning Tobacco Plants into Bioreactors to Drive Down the Cost of Cultivated Meat Growth Media

Food tech startup BioBetter has developed a novel way to create growth factors for cell-cultivated meat utilizing tobacco plants. Based in Kiryat Shemona, Israel, the company announced today that it has developed a method to create growth factors via molecular farming techniques by essentially turning the tobacco plant into a…

MeaTech 3D Files Provisional Patent Application For Cell-Cultured Fat Process

MeaTech 3D announced last week that it has filed a provisional patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to cover its new stem cell manipulation technology. The Israel-based company’s proprietary process uses plant inputs to transform embryonic mesenchymal stem cells (or eMSCs) into fat cells. The patent-pending…

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • future food
  • UPSIDE Foods

Post navigation

Previous Post Voyage Foods is Creating the Future of Coffee, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate
Next Post Eat Just’s GOOD Meat Granted Regulatory Approval to Sell New Cultivated Chicken Products in Singapore

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

The Spoon Podcast Network!

Feed your mind! Subscribe to one of our podcasts!

What Flavor Unlocks
Starbucks Unveils Green Dot Assist, a Generative AI Virtual Assistant for Coffee Shop Employees
Impulse Announces Its Battery-Integrated Cooktop Becomes First Certified to Applicable UL Safety Standards
Tasting Cultivated Seafood in London’s East-end
Tasting Cultivated Seafood in London’s East-end

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.