Molecular farming start-up Bright Biotech has captured a US$3.2 million investment to bring down costs for cultivated meat alternative proteins and help drive cell-based companies production to scale. The business also replaces fetal bovine serum (FBS), used in the cultivated meat sector and procured from the blood of unborn calves, reducing dependence on the dairy and meat industries.

The company plans to bring its chloroplast alternative protein harnessing technology to market in 2023.

“[FBS] is actively being replaced today by animal-component free cell growth feed for ethical reasons and because FBS introduces a lot of variability into cell culture systems,” Mohammad el Hajj, co-founder and CEO at Bright Biotech, tells FoodIngredientsFirst. 

El Hajj explains that animal-component free media costs have to dro below US$1 for the industry to scale. 

“Our calculations show that only replacing the commercially available growth factors (which make up 55% of the marginal cost of cultivate meat) in animal-free growth media with our plant-made growth factors reduces media cost from US$376 to US$21.70 per liter and the cost of manufacturing 1 kg of cultivated meat by 17-fold,” he explains. 

“The effect of animal-component free cell growth feed containing our plant-based growth factors on taste has not been tested, but it is expected that results will be comparable,” El Hajj continues.

Mohammad el Hajj, co-founder and CEO of Bright Biotech. (Credits: Bright Biotech).Cultivate meat momentum
The burgeoning cell-based movement is in the spotlight. 

Last week, the US food authorities gave a historic nod to cell-based chicken in the US. 

Just yesterday, SuperMeat unveiled its cultivated turkey, just in time for Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, in the space, a flurry of start-ups are catching the attention of investors, who see promise in alternative proteins – from mycelium to biomass. https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/next-level-feast-supermeat-unveils-cultivated-turkey-in-time-for-thanksgiving.html 

“The future is looking brighter now after the US regulators cleared lab-grown meat for human consumption (almost one year after Singapore), and the hope is that this expands to include the UK, Europe and every corner of this world.” 

“Unlike plant-based ‘meat,’ meat cultivation can make products that are biologically equivalent to the meat from animals; products that look, smell, cook, taste and chew the same. It is for this reason I predict a bright future for cultivated meat,” underscores El Hajj.

“Of course, the industry still needs to identify and create solutions to address the challenges in production efficiency, scalability and affordability before cultivated meat can be on supermarket shelves,” explains El Hajj.

“Despite the huge technical advances in the past decade that improve the commercial viability of cultivated meat, we are not there yet. We believe we have a solution to help the industry make further progress along all of these lines by addressing one of the largest cost drivers in the production of cultivated meat,” he continues.

Harnessing chloroplastsBright Biotech can yield 2-5 grams of protein per kilogram of leaf material. (Credits: Bright Biotech).
Bright Biotech can yield two to five grams of protein per kilogram of leaf material. El Hajj details that chloroplasts have some advantages over other methods, such as FBS.

The company uses tobacco plants capable of generating 10,000 seeds, making the system highly scalable. 

“Tobacco farming is cheaper than fermentation technologies which require expensive bioreactors and infrastructure limiting cost-effective scalability and production capacity, especially when yields are very low.” notes El Hajj.

The UK start-up is not the only one putting tobacco to good use. BioBetter also uses the plant as a cost-effective source of growth factors for protein cultivation, which can be an alternative revenue stream for tobacco producers.

Other advantages of Bright Biotech chloroplast technologies is that, unlike fermentation technologies, the company’s system does not harbor harmful microbial toxins or animal pathogens, which facilitates and reduces the cost of protein purification. Additionally, the system solely relies on light, water and carbon dioxide, being more sustainable than other technologies and having net-zero carbon potential.