Tag: Biobetter

  • BioBetter Deploys Tobacco to Help Cultivate Meat

    BioBetter Deploys Tobacco to Help Cultivate Meat

    BioBetter has opened its first food-grade pilot facility to accelerate the production of key growth factors for the cultivated meat industry. The company has pioneered a unique protein manufacturing platform for producing growth factors (GFs) using tobacco plants as self-sustained, animal-free bioreactors.

    “Cultivated meat is still very expensive in comparison to conventional meat and the key is to reduce the growth medium costs to a minimum,” said BioBetter CEO Amit Yaari in a statement. “Our target is to reduce the production cost of growth factors, including insulin, a key part of the growth medium, to $1 per gram which is a 100-fold less than the going rate today.”

    BioBetter uses tobacco plants to produce the GFs that play a key role in the proliferation and differentiation of cultured meat cells. This, in turn, allows for the formation of authentic and well-structured muscle tissue.

    Designed for both environmental safety and efficiency, these bioreactors will be grown in a large-scale, net house cultivation system. The plants are carefully engineered to prevent the escape of any transgenic material. They are induced to express growth factors only when chemically triggered, and the company exclusively uses non-food, non-feed tobacco plants to eliminate any risk of inadvertent consumption or cross-contamination of food crops.

    “Our holistic approach not only underscores our commitment to safety and environmental responsibility but also streamlines regulatory processes,” says BioBetter co-founder Dana Yarden. “Our commitment to sustainability shines through in every facet of our operations. We plan to use recycled and low-quality water for irrigation, minimize nitrogen fertilizer use, and reduce emissions and environmental impact.”

    The newly established pilot plant has the capacity to process 100 kg of tobacco plant-derived GFs daily. Constructed in adherence to the highest quality standards, the facility meets all regulatory requirements for production of food-grade growth factors, including FGF2 and insulin. It currently is progressing through essential stages of securing approval from the Ministry of Health for food manufacturing licensing. The company is committed to scalability, adhering to ISO2200 and HACCP standards.

    “We more than doubled our workforce from 23 to 50 workers to advance all aspects of production, cultivation, and R&D,” says Yaari. “We stimulate the commercial aspirations of cultivated meat start-ups and the pilot plant signifies a substantial step toward the company’s next growth stage in 2025: the capacity for processing 25 tons of leaves daily, reaching commercial production of five tons annually by the end of 2025.”

    BioBetter also made breakthroughs in the cultivation of bovine insulin-expressing plants. Several thousand square meters of FGF2-expressing tobacco plants are already thriving in northern Israel. It’s the first time growth factor sources have been successfully planted in large net-houses, in four locations, and with a fruitful harvest obtained in its first season. Plans are underway to cultivate more FGF2 and insulin-expressing plants, with commercial roll-out projected for 2024.

    “Over the past year, our outreach and collaborations expanded considerably,” says Yarden. “We’ve shared GF samples with numerous cultivated meat companies and cell media producers worldwide and received promising proof-of-concept results for both our FGF2 and insulin from several companies and academic laboratories.”

    The $250 million global cultivated meat sector is poised for substantial growth, yet its realization hinges upon a significant supply of growth factors.

    “The most significant challenge of the cultivated meat industry is to produce and scale up at the right cost,” notes Aviv Oren, director of business engagement and innovation at the Good Food Institute in Israel. “Biobetter’s technology, which is based on molecular farming of food-grade growth factors in the required quantities and costs for industrial production, is a pivotal addition that has the potential to accelerate this industry. We are following BioBetter’s progress and hope that its products will soon reach the market.”

    In 2022, BioBetter secured $10 million in A-round investment led by Jerusalem Venture Partners. The company also is an active member of the Israeli Cultivated Meat Consortium, which unites academic institutions, large companies, and start-ups to collaboratively advance the field of cultivated meat.

  • Bottleneck Broken in Cultivated Meat

    Bottleneck Broken in Cultivated Meat

    Photo: BioBetter

    BioBetter, an Israeli biotech firm, is using tobacco plants to significantly reduce the cost of cultivated meat and advance it rapidly to scale-up.

    As numerous cultivated meat start-ups move beyond the proof-of-concept phase, they run against one of the biggest challenges facing this budding industry. Developing a scalable and cost-effective production platform to make cultured meat affordable for the mass market has proven to be a primary stumbling block.

    Cell-derived meat requires a culture medium composed of a mix of amino acids, nutrients, and—most importantly—growth factors (GF’s) without which cells cannot multiply. Currently, such media are costly due to the complexity of producing GF’s. For example, insulin and transferrin GFs are collected from livestock, making it difficult to obtain large quantities. Some can be attained via fermentation of yeast or bacteria, but those methods require expensive facilities. The purification process also is complicated and expensive.

    “The Good Food Institutes determined that approximately a 100-fold reduction in insulin and transferrin costs is required to make cultivated meat economically viable,” explains Dana Yarden, co-founder of BioBetter, in a press note. “It is estimated that growth factors and cell-culture media can constitute 55 to 95% of the marginal cost in manufacturing cell-based foods.”

    BioBetter harnessed the inherent advantages of tobacco plants by turning them into bioreactors for expression and large-scale production of the proteins. Plant bioreactors use renewable energy (sunlight) and fixate CO2. They are self-forming, self-sustaining, and biodegradable. BioBetter uses open-field plantations to enable fast, efficient, and flexible response to market needs.

    “There are multiple advantages to using Nicotiana tabacum as a hardy vector for producing GFs of non-animal origin,” says Amit Yaari of BioBetter. “It is an abundant crop that has no place in the food-and-feed chain due to its extremely bitter taste and content of undesirable alkaloids. The global trend for reducing tobacco smoking also is raising concerns among tobacco growers that the crop might eventually become obsolete. Yet the tobacco plant has huge potential to become a key component in the future of food.” Tobacco plants can achieve up to four growth cycles annually and be harvested all year. This translates to more voluminous outputs per square meter of growing space.

    BioBetter says its uniqueness lies in refining and highlighting the advantages of the tobacco plant platform for production on a huge scale. The start-up applies a proprietary protein extraction and purification technology that enables it to exploit nearly the entire plant, and at the same time deliver a high purity product at broad scale production. The company currently sources tobacco plants from local growers but the goal is to eventually source the raw material from tobacco growers globally. Based on cultivation in open fields and BioBetter’s proprietary purification technology, the cost of growth factors production is dramatically reduced, bringing cost efficiency to cultured meat production.