PORTFOLIO

A significant portion of the global population (> 80%) regularly includes meat in their diets (Ipsos, 2018). While conventional livestock farming has been the historical method of meat production, it utilizes around 30% of the world's land, 8% of its freshwater, and 14.5% of its energy resources. To achieve climate objectives while ensuring ample food supply for the global population, innovative techniques for food production are required (Pelle, 2022). Cellular agriculture (cell ag), holds great promise in this regard. It involves cultivating animal cells to create consumable products like meat and fish. Although initial meat products have been successfully developed using this approach, their thickness is currently limited, restricting the range of available options to ground and processed meat products. With the approval of cultivated/clean meat in the U.S. and Singapore, and on-going but pending approval processes in many other countries, including Switzerland, the demand for solutions to cultivate whole cuts and filets is drastically increasing. sallea AG (http://www.sallea.ch) is developing porous structures, so-called scaffolds, which provide the growth environment for cells to grow into a three-dimensional structure, such as a steak or fish filet. However, this solution is not limited to the cell ag space and can be applied to several other biotechnology cell cultivation processes. The novel scaffolds can be created from a wide range of edible, nutritious materials, and may further improve the texture and nutritional value of the final product. In this project, sallea AG developed an easy-to-use solution to dynamically cultivate cells on the scaffolds in a scalable manner and to accelerate the development of high-value animal-based protein products. A first prototype has successfully been developed and tested on lab and bench scale.

While the scaffolding platform of sallea AG is already advanced, the integration of these scaffolds into the value chain of cultivating meat and fish companies remains a challenge. In the first step of this Innobooster project, a system was designed to enable perfusion-based, dynamic cultivation of cells on the scaffold. The system was first optimized by simulations, which showed that the elongated pores of scaffolds with an anisotropic gyroid structure proved highly favourable for reducing the pressure drop by 90%, lowering the wall shear forces by 50%, and increasing the permeability by a factor 10 compared to a random porous sponge structure. In the second half of this project, the developed design was tested internally by sallea AG and externally by cultivators and it was proven that cells can grow on the scaffolds inside of the perfusion system. By reaching these milestones sallea AG’s system became a viable option in the market and several companies have shown interest in this technical solution. Partnerships with relevant cultivators and bioreactor equipment manufacturers have been established or are being negotiated. However, due to the currently difficult situation of the cell ag industry further development of the scaffold system will only be conducted once new financial traction, e.g. in other biotechnology fields, can be achieved. Although, the results of this Innobooster project will decrease entry hurdles for cultivating companies to grow high-value animal proteins, such as steaks and filets once regulatory approval for this new technology will have been granted.