We are mainly building technology (hardware and consumables) for the cultivated meat industry as B2B model. Since we are not a vertical cultivated meat company we aim to start production within the next year.
Currently the only places in the world where the general public can taste cultivated meat products are one restaurant in Singapore and one restaurant in Israel. So very little amounts at this point :)
Great questions!
1) Yes vascularization is one approach of many to get nutrients to cells in larger constructs. If you want that to be grown naturally by e.g. endothelial cells, this is a rather lengthy and tricky process, so not easy to scale. To start scaling faster the mixing in a bioreactor is easier.
2) Yes electric stimulation is a great tool to stimulate muscle which is important for texture etc. There are also other methods to get there where they basically stimulate themselves.
3) Monterrey, Mexico :)
There are different approaches of helping the engineered muscle tissue to mature, one being electrical stimulation. It's an interesting idea to use it to increase the volume, but the effect of very high stimulation on texture has to be considered as well!
Great question. We had this discussion internally quite a lot. Since my co-founder comes from launching rockets let me use this analogy: 20 years ago Elon Musk was though to be crazy when he wanted to build reusable rockets. But now it works. It took a lot of smart minds, effort and money. But they did it. We believe it will be the same with cultivated meat. Completely changing a system, in our case food system, is always a risk and a bit crazy. We agree that the hype is not great. We don't want to make to bold promises. But we do want to change something and we will work hard to make our part to change a system.
In research often antibiotics are added to avoid contamination from handling etc. However, large scale and automated production processes can be run antibiotic free because of their very controlled sterile environment. Then the product would also be antibiotic free.
Thank you so much! We are extremely passionate about this and its great to see so much support here! Even though software engineering is not something we need right away we are very happy to connect with passionate people for future opportunities! You can drop us an email if you want to stay in touch!
Very good questions there! 1) Yes, our process is similar to bioprinting but it is much more scalable than typical bioprinting. Because this is our proprietary tech I can't say much more than that at this point:) 2) We are currently still using some gelatin in our scaffold which is animal derived but of course we are putting a lot of effort into making it completely animal free asap. 3) There are companies who are focusing on the replacement of FBS and they are moving into relatively scaled processes now. So I would say we are close! Let us know if you have any follow up questions :)