Creating Sustainable Growth Factors: ORF Genetics

The possibility of lab-grown meat at our dinner tables is closer than ever before. With the recent government approval of lab-grown meat in Singapore to the continuous progress of many cellular agriculture companies, it’s so exciting to see the development that has been made towards this field.

However, some problems still exist within cellular agriculture that must be addressed before large-scale production, especially regarding the scalability and pricing of this technology.

Before we get into it, here’s a really simple and quick overview of cellular agriculture for new food-tech enthusiasts: Meat is made up of tissues, which are made up of many cells. Thus, if we have enough cells that can multiply and grow, they can be put together to make meat!

To create these cells for clean meat, you need a cell culture medium to create an ideal environment where cells can proliferate, or grow and divide.

Growth factors are a key aspect of culture medium that provides the nutrients for the cells to grow and undergo the proliferation process.

However, growth factors are really expensive.

A common growth factor used in the production of cultured meat is Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) but it comes with a hefty price tag. FBS is the blood of a cow fetus, meaning that the use of FBS does not align with the goals of cellular agriculture to shift away from reliance on animals for meat. FBS is also expensive due to its…