Accelerating cell-based foods: TurtleTree Labs tackles high costs and advances path to market

06 Jan 2021 --- Cell-based milk and formula company TurtleTree Labs is launching TurtleTree Scientific – an arm dedicated to “the growth of food-grade growth factors” to tackle high costs and advance cell-based foods.

“The key driver of launching TurtleTree Scientific is to help all cellular agriculture companies and the industry as a whole,” Fengru Lin, co-founder and CEO of TurtleTree Labs, tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

“Like cell-based meat, TurtleTree Labs also relies on growth media to grow its cells. Currently, the extremely high cost of these components has been one of the major costs of production and bringing these costs down will be essential for the industry to propel forward.”

Lin explains that TurtleTree Labs is working with research partners to conduct consumer perception studies to understand current consumer sentiments.

Furthermore, the company has plans to launch financing rounds for TurtleTree Scientific.

Costs hindering marketability

TurtleTree Labs relies on growth media to grow its cells, and the extremely high cost of these components is a major hurdle in accelerating marketability.

The company says that despite the costs of producing cell-based meat declining over the years, the cell culture media and growth factors remain one of the biggest cost contributors, hindering the path to market.

Like cell-based meat companies, TurtleTree Labs also relies on cell culture media and growth factors to make milk. Its team of media experts has been focusing on the development of high quality, high volume and cost-efficient growth factors that the company needs.

Leveraging the know-how of its in-house production, the company is launching TurtleTree Scientific to address this crucial need.

“We believe that cell-based foods will reach a marketable price one day. It takes the entire ecosystem to work together toward the goal of cellular agriculture becoming economically feasible. We launch TurtleTree Scientific with the hopes that this day will come sooner rather than later,” Lin details. 

Impact on cellular agriculture industry
For the cellular agriculture industry, the move is significant, the company notes. In early 2021, TurtleTree Scientific will be working with cell-based meat companies on the production of food-grade growth factors. 

The prices are expected to be a fraction of pharmaceutical-grade equivalents on the market. 

Singapore, as the first country in the world to approve the sale of cell-based meat products, is strategic as the country is bound to attract the attention of more cell-based companies and has existing customers that it can scale with.

Co-founders Max Rye and Fengru Lin.The availability of cost-efficient growth factors will be essential for cellular agriculture to validate its economic feasibility. In addition, Singapore is also a regional biotech hub where quality growth factors are in high demand for their use in the life sciences industry, the company says.

“The work being done at TurtleTree Labs is happening with tremendous support from the government, and other governments need to follow Singapore’s lead,” says Bruce Fredrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute. 

Government support is crucial
Fredrich says governments are interested in stopping the next pandemic and in keeping antibiotics working, and they want to meet their climate obligations under the Paris Agreement. 

This means that they should be following Singapore’s lead and doing all they can to create a welcoming environment for innovative companies like TurtleTree Labs, he supports.

“Not only are we collaborating with local research institutes like NUS and NTU, but also global institutions like Wageningen University in the Netherlands. We have already started sending some samples to other cell-based meat companies and aim to play a major role in this industry,” says Max Rye, chief strategist at TurtleTree Labs.  

TurtleTree Labs recently scored US$6.2 million in an oversubscribed pre-series-A funding round from new and existing global investors. The funding will accelerate its research efforts into functional, bioactive proteins and complex sugars found in milk.

The company is on a business growth trajectory as it raised US$3.2 million in previous funding rounds. While its current focus is on high-value breast milk, it is also eyeing opportunities within the cow milk space. 

“Milk is a US$700 billion industry, and most of that is made up of the high-value dairy by-products like cheese, butter, yogurt and infant nutrition,” Lin notes.

“Cell-based milk allows us to produce the components in milk that are crucial for the production of these high-value dairy by-products.”

In the same space, US-based start-up Biomilq recently revealed it is one step closer to offering mammary cell-cultured human breast milk to families around the globe thanks to US$3.5 million in funding. 

By Kristiana Lalou