Cell Based Tech Weekly – MeaTech Preps for Nasdaq Listing, Integriculture Series A, Genome-Scale Metabolic Modeling
Categories Weekly Report
Israeli 3D bioprinting cell based meat company, MeaTech, is making progress towards a Nasdaq listing. https://cellbased.link/f4397
What We Know: The company, currently listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE: MEAT) completed a private financing round of USD $5.7 million. Investors include Rami Levy (through a private company), Israeli meat importer Adom, and institutional investors including Mor Investments, Psagot, Clal, and Meitav.
- According to a GLOBES article, MeaTech said that the new funds will enable the company to list on Nasdaq.
Integriculture Series A
Integriculture, the cell based meat company out of Japan, completed a $7.4 million Series A financing. The round was led by Beyond Next Ventures with additional investment from AgFunder, Hiroshima Venture Capital, NH Foods, Real Tech Fund, and VU Venture Partners, Caygan Capital‘s CEO Naruhisa Nakagawa. https://cellbased.link/45y
Background: Last month, I shared the launch of Integriculture’s CulNet Pipeline, an effort to engage cell based meat suppliers across the supply chain (cell line development, cell culture media development, tissue engineering, bioreactor scale up) to work with Integriculture to accelerate cell based meat’s time to market.
- The pipeline incorporates Integriculture’s own proprietary CulNet system: The CulNet System claims to enable the culture of animal cells of any type and species – terrestrial, aquatic and avian through the co-culturing of cell types that work simultaneously to address issues such as toxin build up and growth factor/media recycling.
Horizontal Integration: Integriculture is positioning itself as a cellular agriculture technology input company including a flavored cell culture medium (SpaceSalt™) and cell proliferation technology (CulNet System). According to a company press release, Integriculture also has goals to launch their own products as off shoots of their tech platform including:
- 2021: Cosmetics product based on cultured serum, by direct-to-consumer model
- 2021: Cell-based foie gras
- 2023: Cell-based processed meat
- 2025: Cell-based steak
Genome-Scale Metabolic Modeling
Researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Penn State published a perspective on the application of genome-scale metabolic modeling as a tool for cell based meat production. https://cellbased.link/kdd
What This Means: Genome-Scale Metabolic Models represent the quantitative relationships within an organism that can be used to determine optimal conditions for cell growth, which could be primarily useful for media formulation analysis; Other types of computational models are being worked on to address bottlenecks in cell proliferation.
→ I spoke with Dr. Simon Kahan, founder of the Cultivated Meat Modeling Consortium:
- Dr. Kahan told me his modeling work is currently focused on how the flow of the fluids inside of the bioreactor affects the individual cells mechanically to determine what facilitates proliferation once you already have an initial set of input requirements including cell type, media formulation, adhesion forces, cell death rate, and cell growth rate.
The model can test variables inside of the bioreactor including:
- Rotor speed & rotor shape
- How and when to add microcarriers during cell proliferation
- Oxygen injected into system
- How often to change media
Bottom Line: Models could be particularly useful for cell based meat scientists who have developed a prototype and have a specific set of rules to put into a computer model and now want to build on this prototype to predict what will happen at a larger scale. The end goal is optimization to make the product cheaper, faster, and with desired specifications such as moisture retention or increased fat content.
