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Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

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Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#11

Post by vpribble »

desireco42 wrote: post #6

Hey, excuse my ignorance. How difficult is to procure food you use to grow cells? You mentioned insulin and such. Can you comment on how "green" are those materials?

Great question! So the basic medium composition itself is fairly simple, but the growth factors can be difficult to make. There are many places along the supply chain that are strained due to recent events. Because of this, procuring the food is somewhat difficult, but should become easier in the future. Many companies within cultivated meat (such as Heuros, Multus, Future Fields) are also working on animal-free growth factors by using precision fermentation. Precision fermentation is essentially beer brewing, but the yeast is genetically modified to produce a certain growth factor. As for being green, the industry is trending towards trying to find ways to utilize plants as much as possible across production phases. Eventually, besides the initial cells, most cultivated meat production could rely on common plants for the nutrients and growth factors for the cells. This could drastically decrease overall emissions, and even make the products carbon-negative.

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#12

Post by asmertgen »

Thebroser wrote: post #5

Hey! Bioengineering background here, how do you all embed the cells within the scaffold? Is your approach similar to other bioprinting approaches (initial cells seeded via extrusion, inkjet, or laser assisted deposition)? At first I would think this could be done with some sort of printable collagen scaffold but I'm curious for what your approach would be. In addition, as someone that is involved in therapeutics, I'm…

Very good questions there! 1) Yes, our process is similar to bioprinting but it is much more scalable than typical bioprinting. Because this is our proprietary tech I can't say much more than that at this point:) 2) We are currently still using some gelatin in our scaffold which is animal derived but of course we are putting a lot of effort into making it completely animal free asap. 3) There are companies who are focusing on the replacement of FBS and they are moving into relatively scaled processes now. So I would say we are close! Let us know if you have any follow up questions :)

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#13

Post by kieckerjan »

Impressive initiative. I understand too little of this matter to judge the merits of your approach. However, it is clear to me that if cultivated meat achieves feature parity with "regular" meat and becomes cheaper to produce, it will be the biggest revolution in food since the invention of agriculture, and a possible world saver. Thank you for trying! :-)

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#14

Post by ada1981 »

thecolorblue wrote: post #9

I have also worked with bioreactors. Sounds like you have made some great progress. Just a couple thoughts: 1) there are plenty of other niches for microbe production that could possibly use the same technology. I am not suggesting you switch now, but something to keep in mind for the future. In my opinion, the current standard processes for working with bioreactors are slow and manual. I think there is a lot of room…

Can you share more about your ideas?

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#15

Post by vpribble »

tambourine_man wrote: post #10

Interesting stuff! I've read that contamination is a huge issue, essentially, bacteria grows much better and faster at the substrate than mammalian cells. So, how do you avoid inadvertently cultivating smelly plaques instead of delicious meat? Or is that not really an issue and I'm misinformed? Best of luck. We really need it.

Contamination is definitely a problem for cultivated meat. It is one of the leading risks when scaling because if the reactor is contaminated at all, you could lose entire batches of meat, and as you can imagine, this is a huge cost hit. To avoid this, cultivated meat is grown in sterile, clean environments. The same kind of equipment you'd find in a hospital (autoclaves) is used to sterilize the equipment common in cultivated meat. There are two basic ideas for preventing contamination. One is to use single use bioreactors, which are sterile after manufacturing. This is extremely common in the biopharma industry, and is preferred because it doesn't require complex cleaning systems. Of course, anything that is single use ends up in a landfill, so thats part of the trade off as well. The other option is to use reusable bioreactors. These require a steam clean after each batch, which adds to the overall operational and build costs of the reactor. This can also generate waste products which have to be handled. Maintaining cleanliness is a challenge, but with proper laboratory practices, and the right kind of bioreactor, contamination should be less of a problem.

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#16

Post by Thebroser »

asmertgen wrote: post #12
Thebroser wrote: post #5

Hey! Bioengineering background here, how do you all embed the cells within the scaffold? Is your approach similar to other bioprinting approaches (initial cells seeded via extrusion, inkjet, or laser assisted deposition)? At first I would think this could be done with some sort of printable collagen scaffold but I'm curious for what your approach would be. In addition, as someone that is involved in therapeutics, I'm…

Very good questions there! 1) Yes, our process is similar to bioprinting but it is much more scalable than typical bioprinting. Because this is our proprietary tech I can't say much more than that at this point:) 2) We are currently still using some gelatin in our scaffold which is animal derived but of course we are putting a lot of effort into making it completely animal free asap. 3) There are companies who are fo…

Thanks a ton for your reply! I wish you all the best, tons of cool innovation to be done here.

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#17

Post by ada1981 »

I love this project as a vegan for the last 23 years!

Our group EarthPilot would love to provide support to this civilization scale project.

We work with some of the most brilliant and successful founders and teams on earth on leadership, mindset, high performance, culture and emotional mastery.

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#19

Post by greggeter »

Honest question. Why make meat? Why not use your resources to create nutrition bars? You have to source everything the meat needs to grow anyway (and what are those sources/impacts?), why not just press it in a bar and be done? If you're afraid folks will really miss their meat, so you want to ply them with meat, let me just say - folks who love meat will find the meat they love. They won't likely shift to reactor meat for environmental reasons.

Conscientious meat lovers will invest in regenerative agriculture, lobby for ending corn feeding, reclaim all that land, return it to natural grassland, and let ruminant animals do what they do best -- feed the soil and make meat.

Re: Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

#20

Post by shafyy »

blondie9x wrote: post #3

@asmertgen thoughts on this research https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca... ?

This is a very good article. I place lab-grown in the same mind bucket as carbon capturing. Both are futuristic technologies that don't exist today (not really) but get a lot of media hype. For both, there's a much easier solution that exists today (e.g, switching to renewable energies, switching to plant-based meats) that are great and are also gaining a lot of traction. With both tech, it's unclear if they will ever work at scale. For both cases, it's now more important than ever that we reduce emissions today, and not hope for a maybe technofix in the future.

I don't mean to dunk on your research and proprietary tech. I'm just often pissed to see that these kind of tech is completely overblown and overhyped in the mainstream and media. The worst part is, it gives people an excuse to not change their behavior today: "I'll switch to lab-grown meat when they sell", "I won't cut back on flying, doesn't matter since they will recapture that carbon anyways very soon".

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