Posted: Wed, 05 Jul 2023 15:16:10 +0000
We Welcome Dutch Government Agreement to Conduct Pre-Approval Tastings of Cultivated Meat in The Netherlands Continue reading at the publisher's website.
In this series we are interviewing our future farmers at Mosa Meat and what inspires them as pioneers of cellular agriculture. Today we spoke with Christoph Börlin, Senior Bioinformatician on the Computing Team at Mosa Meat.
Where did you grow up, Christoph, and what sparked your interest in scientific computing?
I grew up in Mannheim, in southern Germany. I was very interested in science during high school, particularly biology and chemistry, but I also enjoyed working on and with computers. I also spent a lot of my free time during high school rowing, which I did on a competitive level for six years.
After high school, I did a year of civil service in a hospital laboratory analysing gene variants for heart disease patients. That furthered my interest in biology, so I decided to pursue an education linked to biochemistry. I did my Bachelor’s in Molecular Biotechnology at Heidelberg University, where I got interested in the bioinformatics and systems biology research areas, which I then followed up on with my Master’s in Integrated Systems Biology at the University of Luxembourg. My Master’s was a joint double degree programme with the State University of New York at Buffalo, United States. There I worked at the interface of bioinformatics and laboratory work. This is where my interest in bioinformatics and scientific computing in general began.
After that, I wanted to get deeper into bioinformatics and biotechnology, so I ended up in Gothenburg, Sweden at the Chalmers University of Technology for my PhD. My thesis was focused on better understanding how transcription [the process by which a cell makes an RNA copy of a piece of DNA] is regulated in baker’s yeast.
You’re a bioinformatician—can you tell us more about what bioinformatics is, exactly?
Bioinformatics is the use of computational methods to process, analyze and visualize biological data. Nowadays, there is a lot of data produced in biological research, and you are no longer only comparing two numbers but many at the same time. For example, it’s impossible to analyse RNA sequencing data using traditional spreadsheets, because you’re looking at gene expression changes for over 22,000 genes at the same time. You need more advanced methods to understand gene expression patterns in cow cells, which is where bioinformatics comes into play.
Speaking of cows.. how did you discover Mosa Meat?
After my PhD, I was looking for jobs in industry, as I felt my work would have a more immediate impact compared to staying in academia. I found the bioinformatics role at Mosa Meat on LinkedIn. It sounded very interesting and a good match for my skill set. I applied, and was lucky to end up here!
Tell us more about your work at Mosa.
The work is very cross-disciplinary and varied. I work with every scientific team at Mosa to analyse our data, help plan experiments, and enable rigorous use of statistics. The projects range from improving cell attachment with the Muscle Tissue Engineering Team to understanding fat cell differentiation with the Fat Tissue Engineering Team.
For example, I work with RNA sequencing data which I then analyse using different tools (Python-based programming, published tools, and in-house developed tools) and help guide our scientists on how to get the most insights from it.
Through gathering and analysing the data, we can better understand and improve our processes. For example, if we better understand what is happening with our cells, we can also understand how to improve differentiation [the step where we mature our cells]. We also need to compare different compounds we add to medium, and this helps us find lower-cost and environmentally-friendly compounds.
Another major part of my work is building tools that make data accessible for the scientists so they can analyse it themselves. We have developed many tools in-house to support our scientists in analysing the data from their experiments.
What motivates you to work here?
I love my colleagues and our shared mission. We’re working together to achieve the important goal of bringing cultured meat to market. I am especially concerned about the climate impact of traditional meat production and I believe that my work at Mosa Meat will play a role in mitigating that.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.Today, we are pleased to share that we have signed an agreement with our partner and investor Nutreco to collaborate on creating a cell feed supply chain.
This is a new milestone in our longstanding partnership. In October 2021, we were jointly awarded a React EU grant* for the ‘Feed for Meat’ project, which strives to lower the cost of cultivated beef while creating a robust supply chain to scale up production.
Optimising the cost and components of cell feed has been widely considered a key challenge that needs to be overcome for the nascent cultivated meat industry to reach the commercialisation stage. Now, our scientists have confirmed that a basal media (cell feed) formulated with food-grade ingredients instead of pharma-grade ones performs equally well at a substantially lower cost – a critical step to further develop the cellular agriculture supply chain. Furthermore, 99.2% of the basal cell feed by weight has been successfully replaced with food-grade components.
“Our partnership with Nutreco represents our commitment to further develop the cellular agriculture supply chain and bring down costs,” shared Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat. “Our scientific results are an industry first, proving that food-grade ingredients perform equivalent to pharma-grade in cell feed. This will represent a significant cost savings as we scale up production.”
Key components of cell feed are amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and glucose. In recent experiments, fully matured beef cells fed with these food-grade substitutes showed similar cell density to cells fed with pharma-grade material.
“At Nutreco, we innovate to produce feed ingredients more sustainably and create feed formulations optimised to deliver the highest yields for protein producers. Through our collaboration with Mosa Meat, we mastered a crucial step in creating affordable, food-safe and scalable nutritional solutions for the cultivated meat industry,” said Susanne Wiegel, head of the Alternative Protein Programme at Nutreco.
The muscle cell count for pharma-grade versus food-grade based medium after proliferation demonstrates equivalent performance of the food-grade cell feed.
Continue reading at the publisher's website.Fat is an essential component of the taste, aroma and mouthfeel of meat—which is why we have been focused on adding cultivated fat to our burgers since 2018. We’ve observed that adding even a small amount of cultivated fat can make a big difference to consumers’ sensory experience. On our mission to reshape the global food system, we remain committed to reducing our dependence on animals in the process of cultivating this key ingredient.
We are pleased to share our latest publication on cultivating fat without FBS, ‘A simplified and defined serum-free medium for cultivating fat across species’.
Fetal bovine serum (FBS) was used in our field as a supplement for cell feed (also known as cell culture media) due to its richness in nutrients and growth factors. However, it is neither ethical nor sustainable to use this animal component, and our founders committed to removing FBS from our process in 2016. Last year, we shared a peer-reviewed paper on muscle differentiation in serum-free media. Now, we are pleased to also share our complementary paper on cultivating fat without FBS.
In this open-access, peer-reviewed paper, we share the recipe to cultivate fully mature beef fat without FBS in a simple, one-step protocol which we have been using since 2020. This is demonstrated for cow cells, but can also be applied to other species including sheep and pigs.
“We’re very proud to share these results from our world-class team of scientists, as it is crucial for our industry to be able to cultivate meat without animal components,” shared Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat today. “Being able to cultivate fat without FBS is key to our continued scale up towards industrial production volumes.”
In the paper, we cultivate fat cells in a range of different cell feed types. Our results show superior fat cultivation (adipogenesis) with our in-house developed, serum-free cell feed. Both the percentage of positive cells and total lipid area is significantly higher.
“Our in-house developed media is able to overcome differences in species differentiation that were always observed with traditionally-used protocol containing serum,” shares Rada Mitic, first author and PhD candidate at Mosa Meat.
“It has previously been notoriously difficult to differentiate precursor cells for beef fat, and this paper finally demonstrates a robust adipogenic protocol for cow cells without any animal components,” shared Dr. Laura Jackisch, corresponding author on the publication and Head of Fat Tissue Engineering at Mosa Meat.
The Mosa Approach includes full maturing (or differentiating) our cells using animal-free cell feed, and sharing this knowledge with others to advance the field. We are committed to continuing to share our progress in developing robust, scalable, animal-free systems for cultivating meat with the broader cellular agriculture community.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.The past decade has seen the emergence of the field of cultivated meat. When we unveiled the world’s very first cultivated beef burger, grown directly from cow cells, it marked the birth of our field with a tangible proof of concept. Since then, several cultivated meat and seafood companies have been founded. In Singapore, a cultivated chicken product has been approved for sales, and in the U.S. the FDA confirmed safety of another cultivated chicken product.
We are now approaching a new pivotal phase for our nascent industry: commercialisation. Therefore, we want to reflect on the state of the field and share our vision on the key factors for success in the upcoming years.
The Aim: Replace Meat with Meat
At Mosa Meat, we believe that only swapping meat with meat has the potential for mass consumer adoption. And, large scale adoption is needed to solve the sustainability issues currently associated with our food system.
Meat eaters haven’t significantly altered their habits, despite decades of optimization in plant-based meat replacements by a growing number of well-funded companies and marketing campaigns stating “we are meat”. The percentage of voluntary vegan/vegetarian diets in the population within many countries is still in the single digits. The protein transition our planet requires is not happening quickly enough and the current shifts in consumer behaviour are not expected to restore the balance between what we consume and what our planet can sustain.
For real progress in the protein transition, new solutions are needed to give consumers exactly what they expect from meat. The true potential of cultivated meat is that consumers can keep eating the products they love, exactly as they are doing now — and we don’t need to bet on massive global consumer behavioural change to reduce the current negative externalities of meat consumption. This is the primary reason Mosa Meat was founded.
Cultivating Real Meat
In order to replace conventional meat with cultivated meat, it needs to achieve parity in composition, nutritional value, culinary experience, and cost. This is considered the ‘holy grail’ of cellular agriculture. Many scientific and engineering advances are required to reach this point. To rise to the challenge, we have brought together the largest scientific team working on cultivated meat globally. Our team of over 100 scientists and food specialists work directly with our co-founders Prof. Dr. Mark Post and Peter Verstrate, who are both actively involved in the pioneering work that is taking place at Mosa Meat every day.
Many companies have emerged over the past years and multiple approaches to making cultivated meat are being explored at the moment. We feel it is important to clarify some of the fundamental differences in these approaches, in order to increase the chances of shared success within our field.
Below, we dive into some of the fundamental principles behind our approach and why we believe they contribute to higher product quality and improve the scalability of cultivated meat.
Mosa Burger, 2022
1. Select Cells that Add Value
Many types of animal cells can be used to start the cultivation process, originating from different parts of an animal and each leading to different functionality in the end product. Of course, we want to use those cells that have the potential to provide the right nutritional value and the same culinary benefits to consumers. This is the case when using muscle precursor (myosatellite) cells and fat precursor cells that are committed to only become muscle or fat tissue. There are other components in meat, like connective tissue (e.g., cells called fibroblasts that develop into skin/collagen), but apart from providing a form of texture, they do not provide the key characteristics that consumers expect from meat.
Ultimately, we believe it is not enough to use just any animal cells in a product. We want them to provide the exact functionality appreciated in meat.
2. Differentiate Cells into Mature Muscle Fibres and Fat Tissue
The cultivation process takes place in two key phases: the first is when individual cells multiply from tens of thousands to trillions of cells (the ‘proliferation’ phase), and the second phase is when they fuse together and become tissue (the ‘differentiation’ phase). The key to making real meat is this second, differentiation phase.
Muscle cells can only become the familiar fibres that we recognize as the structure of meat and produce the meat-specific proteins that provide important nutritional value, when they fully differentiate. This is relevant for ground meat products, but even more important to ultimately produce whole cuts.
Our differentiated muscle cells (7 days maturity) with nuclei (blue) and muscle specific proteins f-actin (red) and myosin (green).
Fat precursor cells can become fat cells (adipocytes) and eventually fat tissue through a process called adipogenesis, where fat molecules called lipids build up to form large droplets inside the cells. To our knowl Continue reading at the publisher's website.
In this series we are interviewing our future farmers at Mosa Meat and what inspires them as pioneers of cellular agriculture. Today we interviewed Sergio Spaans, Manager on the Muscle Team.
Sergio, tell us a bit about your background. Where are you from and what got you interested in science?
I was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We moved to Aruba when I was five, and I grew up on the island. In my childhood I spent a lot of time playing outside, and at school I was more into studying than socializing. My favourite subjects at school were math, chemistry, biology and general science.
I finished high school in Aruba, and then chose to move to the Netherlands for University. It was a big culture shift, but an obvious choice. I did my Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Eindhoven.
Towards the end of my Masters, also in Biomedical Engineering, I decided I wanted to do a PhD. I went into depth on biomaterials and tissue engineering, an expansion of what I’m interested in the field of heart regeneration.
What got you interested in Mosa Meat and cultivated meat?
While finishing my PhD I was looking for something that would combine science and sustainability. I was becoming more aware of what we’re doing to the planet and wanted to apply my knowledge of science to something I can do for the planet.
When I learned about Mosa Meat it was the perfect opportunity. I applied for a Technician role because I just wanted to join and work with Arin [the Head of the Muscle Team]. But then they opened up another position for a Senior Scientist.
Can you describe your work within the Muscle Team?
We have different units in the Muscle team. The Bio-artificial Muscle (BAM) unit [which Sergio leads] is focusing on the 3D environment for the cells. So any construct that we make for the cells, we’re the ones that make it, culture it, analyse it.
I like the work as you have a lot of overlap with other units. The chemistry unit makes molecules and feeds back to us what we need. Then you have the maturation unit that studies ways to improve differentiation at a cellular level and the protein unit that finds ways to optimally characterize our cells and tissues. Then we use the information and apply it to a tissue-level. We also rely on other teams, for example all the cell differentiation is derived from what the Cell Biology team has found and optimized.
The system we’re making is completely animal-free. State of the art muscle tissue is made with animal-based components. What we’re using, alginate with a short peptide, is completely animal-free and has never been shown before to create differentiated muscle tissue. So, you have to think outside the box and use very complex manufacturing techniques. Basically, just as Jedi's use the force for knowledge and defense, you can think of us as BAM masters who use science and engineering to create muscle.
How do you feel your values have changed since joining Mosa Meat, and what is it like working here?
What I appreciate about Mosa Meat is the high level of interaction with colleagues and the diversity of people’s backgrounds. It is an open environment where you can be yourself easily. You are not forced into being someone else.
Also, as an Aruban you’re part of a community where you support one another. Mosa Meat is a small island where you can depend on each other; that’s what I like the most about it.
Since joining, I have become a more community-oriented person. The sense of community, helping each other, it’s a value I want to embody more. For me being part of Mosa Meat and making new connections is living that value; it’s the feeling that you have a family.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.This year, COP 27, the world’s largest climate-focused gathering, also known as the UN Climate Change Conference, centrally features agri-food and specifically alternative proteins for the first time. Cultivated meat is a key part of the conversation due to its potential to reduce the negative climate impact of food production, while increasing global food security and climate resilience.
Mosa Meat is contributing to the conversation at COP27 via the Food Systems Pavilion, co-hosted by the Good Food Institute, the Environmental Defense Fund, EIT Food and six other international organisations with support from the World Economic Forum, the European Union, and the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture.
“The inclusion of cultivated beef at COP27 this year marks a historic breakthrough,” shared Mosa Meat CEO Maarten Bosch. “Our goal is to help solve some of the most pressing issues associated with current industrial beef production and help combat the climate crisis by offering new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef.”
Today, Maarten spoke on a panel with other alternative protein leaders, policymakers and investors on the need to drive food innovation to meet global climate, food security, public health and biodiversity goals.
“It’s a great step forward to see increased attention on agrifood reform and specifically, cultivated beef at COP27,” Maarten elaborated. “With Mosa Meat’s rapid recent growth, creating the biggest scientific team in the industry and the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, I am very excited for what lies ahead as we help reshape the global food system.”
COP27 will take place Sunday, November 6 through Friday, November 18 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, with global leaders meeting to build on previous successes and pave the way to effectively tackle the global challenge of climate change.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.Today, we’re celebrating taking the next step in the scaling up of our facilities at Mosa Meat for the production of cultivated beef. We’re expanding to a total of 7,340 m2 facilities (77,000 sq ft.), making it the largest cultivated meat campus in the world.
Our new industrial production development centre is just a few minutes down the street from our existing pilot facility in Maastricht. After demonstrating our process at pilot scale, we are now ready for the next phase of our expansion which will house industrial-size production lines and enable us to make larger quantities of beef.
“We’ve expanded our space by 2,760 square metres in our next phase, which brings Mosa Meat’s total footprint to over 7,340 square metres (77,000 square feet),” shares Maarten Bosch, our CEO. “This makes us the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, and provides a solid foundation for our European and global commercialisation plans.”
The Mosa Meat logo is added to the company’s most recent 2,760 m2 campus expansion
We have grown to over 160 employees, with over 80 scientists and the largest number of PhDs in the industry in just a few years’ time. The production team has grown five-fold in the last three months to 15 members. They are working with our Bioprocess Development and Automation teams to transfer our world-class research on cultivating beef to large scale production in this space.
Simultaneously we have also expanded our footprint at existing locations, including operations at Brightlands Health Campus and our current pilot facility in Maastricht, where our R&D capacity continues to grow. Together, this brings us one step closer towards commercialisation.
We look forward to updating you on the launch of our newest industrial production development centre next year, as we continue to work towards our mission of fundamentally reshaping the global food system.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.In this series we are interviewing our future farmers at Mosa Meat and what inspires them as pioneers of cellular agriculture. Today we spoke with Ersi Emmanouilidou, a Process Engineer on our Production Team.
Ersi, where are you from and what brought you to Mosa Meat?
I grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece. Growing up I was always interested in how life works, from dinosaurs to animals to bacteria and viruses. I decided to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology, with specialisation in molecular biology, at the University of Crete.
After University I worked as a research associate in Athens for about a year and half, when I realised I wanted to do something more applied within the biology sector. I had always enjoyed drinking beer, and knew this was a product made from fermentation. I discovered two courses in Brewing in the UK and decided to pursue my Master’s in Brewing & Distilling at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh.
Afterwards, I worked in breweries for the next five years in the UK. This year, I moved to Belgium due to my partner’s job. I realised I wanted to do something different from brewing, but not completely unrelated. I found the role of Process Engineer at Mosa Meat and thought this was a very cool opportunity to apply my knowledge to an important mission.
What would you say is the main difference between brewing beer and cultivating beef?
Cultivating beef takes more time and is a more complex process. Firstly, cells take a much longer time to grow than yeast.
Secondly, yeast is a whole organism found in nature. You would never see a cow cell outside in nature. Cells are supposed to live within a cow, with the supportive mechanism of a whole cow. This makes them much more sensitive.
This is why what we are doing here, essentially creating a cow’s metabolism in a bioreactor, is much more complex.
What is a typical day like for you at Mosa?
Typically I come in, check my emails, try to organise orders, and schedule certain meetings with suppliers. We also have meetings with Jaco [Head of Production at Mosa Meat] to organise weekly schedules of team members and train new members – our team has grown quickly in the last few months!
In my previous role we were brewing beer in steel tanks, here we are using bioreactors. We’re looking at how to keep these bioreactors clean, preparing cells for the bioreactors, and checking the parameters required there so the cells grow.
We frequently collaborate with the Bioprocess Development and Automation teams to scale up the R&D processes. When we are designing the experiments, they are also in the meetings to combine their experience to how we can translate that to a larger scale.
What inspires you most about working here?
What inspires me is that this process can change the world. When solar panels were first developed it was extremely expensive, and quite inefficient. Over the years, that process was optimised.
It will be the same curve here, whereby we want to take animals out of factories. The cow is the most polluting animal in terms of greenhouse gas production. I find it important that we are focusing on that.
The end goal of making cultivated beef available to the masses is what I find really motivating.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.In this series we are interviewing our future farmers at Mosa Meat and what inspires them as pioneers of cellular agriculture. Today we spoke with Dhruv Raina, Senior Scientist in the Stemness and Isolation Team at Mosa Meat.
Where did you grow up, Dhruv, and what got you interested in biology?
I grew up in Bangalore, a major city in India with a population of over 13 million people. I didn’t grow up around nature. Yet despite being surrounded by concrete, I’ve always really loved biology.
I was the student that sat at the back of the class and stared out of the window. I remember I wanted to invent a car that, instead of exhaust, would emit perfume. I thought it would be better for the environment, maybe get rid of the methane!
When you look at structures like buildings, they’re very purpose-built. What I love about biology is it’s an inversion of this. You can look at any scale of biology— from a large colony of ants, to a single ant, to the biochemical environment inside an ant — and the ‘whys’ are really well hidden. It’s this infinite fractal of inscrutable purpose, you can look as deeply as you want and you’ll never really understand the why.
How did you pursue your passion for science after school?
I studied Chemistry, Genetics and Biotechnology at Bangalore University and did my Masters in Regenerative Medicine at Manipal Institute of Regenerative Medicine [also in Bangalore]. During my Masters, we studied stem cells in various niches and different kinds of signaling. Cells need to speak to each other to reach some kind of balance among the different types that exist in an organism.
I then pursued my PhD and studied cell signaling in mouse embryonic stem cells at the Max Planck of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany.
I’ve always been curious how physical aspects of environments influence cellular behavior, as well. That’s what brought me here to Mosa Meat. What we’re doing here in many ways is trying to develop some robustness in guiding the cells to differentiate into specific fates that we need them to take.
Tell us more about your work at Mosa Meat.
To cultivate beef, we need to fully understand all the relevant signaling and environmental interactions that will evoke the same differentiation response in our cells as inside the animal.
My main focus is trying to understand biochemical signals and physical forces that cells experience inside our large scale culture systems [our bioreactors]. It’s crucial to get the environmental cues completely right to get robustness in differentiation.
For example, there are physical forces like cells bumping against the walls of the bioreactors or experiencing rapidly shifting fluid currents. There’s also the biochemical signaling aspect, for example how the cells respond to what we feed them. The interaction between the physical environment and biochemical signaling is what will allow us to cultivate the cells at scale by creating the right environmental cues.
Fat precursor cells grown on a microcarrier. In cyan is the nucleus, and red marks the cell body (actin).
And how interdisciplinary is the work that our future farmers do at Mosa Meat?
It’s a biological and engineering challenge. On the biology side of things, we need to demonstrate that we’ve understood the system well enough that you can reduce it and consistently get the same result.
It’s an engineering problem because once we simplify the biology and the growth of these cells, we need to build instruments that are so easy to operate that we can push a button and the equipment does most of the work for you.
Continue reading at the publisher's website.We are excited to share that the Dutch government announced today it will be earmarking € 60 million to support the formation of an ecosystem around cellular agriculture. This represents the largest public funding into the cellular agriculture field ever, globally.
The funding represents a first step towards a larger growth plan proposing to invest € 252–€ 382 million in cellular agriculture as part of the National Growth Fund, which aims to create structural economic growth by investing in innovative economic sectors. The funds will be used to stimulate cellular agriculture education, academic research, publicly accessible scale-up facilities, societal integration (including farmers and consumers) and innovation.
Mosa Meat is a proud founding member of the newly formed consortium Cellular Agriculture Netherlands, which made the proposal. Member organisations include academia, NGOs, startups and other industry players.
Minister Micky Adriaansens of Economic Affairs and Climate and committee chair Jeroen Dijsselbloem at a press conference to announce the second round of the National Growth Fund.
“We are very excited for the visionary leadership the government is demonstrating today,” said Ira van Eelen, on behalf of the Dutch Cellular Agriculture Foundation. “The Netherlands is the ideal place for cellular agriculture to flourish. It has a rich history in laying the global foundations of cellular agriculture. It is the 2nd biggest exporter of traditional agricultural products after the US. It is a global powerhouse in alternative protein and food innovation. It has a global frontrunner position in biotechnology. And it was the first country to publicly fund cultivated meat research and present a proof of concept to the world.”
The investment in cellular agriculture is projected to generate an incremental €10 - €14 billion in Dutch GDP growth per year by 2050, with significant global climate, environmental and health benefits. This includes avoiding ~12 Mton CO2-eq. emissions and 100-130 kton ammonia per year in 2050.
We hope that this impulse will attract more companies, more funding, and more collaboration across the cellular agriculture field in The Netherlands over the next few years.
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Continue reading at the publisher's website.