source:giphy

In an interview with CleanTechnica, Erdem Erikçi, CTO of Turkish cell based meat company, Biftek.co, Erikçi mentioned a major challenge cell based meat companies are dealing with: waste build-up.

Cells secrete metabolic waste that is naturally cleaned within the body by other tissues such as the liver and the kidney. In the ex vivo (outside the organism) setup, this natural cleaning process does not occur.

One company, Japan based Integriculture, declares to have a solution to this problem:

Patented CulNet technology, is a system of three tanks with three different cell types simulating an environment that mimics the interaction between cells as they would behave in the animals body. Integriculture’s CulNet system provides an advantage of recycling serum and reducing waste build up as one tissue produces waste that another type of tissue can re-uptake and reuse as food.

Advancements

Leading animal collagen manufacturer, GELITA and cell based collagen producer, Geltor signed a letter of intent for developing, producing and marketing the first ingestible animal-free collagen proteins – to be launched in late 2020. https://cellbased.link/50g

What This Means: The world’s first animal-free collagen for consumption that will actually contain all of the micronutrients found in collagen sourced from animals.

This product will tap two booming markets: collagen peptides + animal free products!

Cell Based Meat company, Meatable, has joined biotech incubator, Planet B.io, based at the Biotech Campus Delft in The Netherlands. In addition to mentorship from industry veterans such as Royal DSM, the incubator provides office and lab space with a pilot production facility to test technology. https://cellbased.link/80467

The incubator was created to accelerate the development of technologies including synthetic biology, microbial fermentation and tissue engineering.

Investments

Agronomics invests $1.5 million into lab grown leather company, VitroLabs for ~3.79% of the company, implying a $39.5 million valuation.

VitroLabs is developing cell cultured skin cells through what the company refers to as the “world’s first fully scalable tissue-engineering platform.” https://cellbased.link/gqk