Cultivated meat growth factors cost reduction summary
- Growth factors dominate cultivated meat costs but are essential
- Orf Genetics supplies cheaper growth factors to about 150 companies
- Barley-based production rather than E-coli lowers costs without harming cultures
- Barley offers easy stockpiling renewable and global cultivation
- Cheaper media, automation and regulation determine cultivated meat scalability
Growth factors are at the heart of the cultivated meat sector. A key component of the cell culture medium which is crucial to cultivated meat production, growth factors are also one of the main costs for the industry.
Icelandic company Orf Genetics aims to supply cheap growth factors to cultivated meat companies at a far lower price than those produced elsewhere.
The company supplies to around 150 companies worldwide, including several major cultivated meat names such as Mosa Meat in the Netherlands and Australia’s Vow.
What are growth factors?
Growth factors are proteins that stimulate the growth and proliferation of cells, among many other functions.
They are one of the major components of cultivated meat production, and must be added to the cell culture medium, the mix of nutrients which cultivated meat requires to work, for the products to grow.
The only problem is, they are also one of the costliest. The sector has made some progress in recent years in cutting these costs, although the expensiveness of production still makes cultivated meat difficult to scale.
The sector faces many barriers, not least regulation and consumer scepticism. But even if those barriers did not exist, cost would remain an issue.
Reducing the cost of growth factors is therefore entirely necessary if cultivated meat is to become commercially viable.
Cost reduction for growth factors
Orf Genetics has cut down the price of growth factors by using barley.
When the company started, growth factors were largely produced in E-coli bacteria, explains Orf’s CSO and co-founder Björn Örvar. Orf, however, discovered that they can be produced using barley proteins.
The use of barley proteins drastically reduces the cost of growth factors, he says, without having any negative impact on the cell culture medium.
Producing growth factors in barley seeds, however, does not have this problem.
To develop these growth factors, the company first produces the DNA molecule that represents the gene of the growth factor they want to create, then incorporates it into the genetics of barley plants by introducing the DNA into the barley stem cell. These stem cells are then cultivated to become a plant.
These are then grown, and their seeds are screened to find out which have produced growth factors at the highest level. These seeds are then planted. This selective breeding is used to create growth factors in abundance.
Other ways of reducing the cost of growth factors have been tried in the past. For example, cells have been engineered to produce their own growth factors. But this, explains Orf’s Örvar, is less controllable, and poses regulatory restrictions because of the EU’s scepticism of gene editing, which it often involves.
Why barley?
Barley is beneficial because of the relative ease of which it can be produced, explains Örvar.
Much of Orf’s barley is grown in greenhouses using the renewable geothermal energy that is abundant in Iceland, giving said greenhouse a negative carbon footprint, according to the company.
But barley can also be grown in the field, out in the open. It even grows in Iceland, where the climate is too harsh for many crops. As well as Iceland, the company also grows barley in Canada, and is piloting production in Chile and Argentina.
Being able to cultivate barley outside, rather than always needing to build greenhouses, is a big cost-saver, explains Berglind Rán Ólafsdóttir, CEO of Orf Genetics. Using food-grade tech, rather than pharma-grade, also significantly reduces costs.
Not only is barley easy to produce, but barley seeds are easy to stockpile as well.
What now for cultivated meat?
What’s the next big barrier for cultivated meat production?
The cost of the cell culture medium, of which growth factors are a part, is hundreds of times cheaper than it was when the cultivated meat sector started out, says Mark Post, CSO of Mosa Meat and the developer of the first cultivated burger. However, making the medium cheaper is still a priority for the sector.
Costs can also be reduced through the design of the factory. For example, labour can be reduced by automating elements of the factory. Factories can also be designed to be compatible with food-grade equipment, rather than pharma-grade, which will also save costs.
Beyond production itself, regulation remains the key barrier facing the sector. When this will change, only time will tell.
