FoodTech start-up BioBetter Ltd. has opened its first food-grade pilot facility to accelerate the production of key growth factors for the cultivated meat industry.

BioBetter's unique protein manufacturing platform produces growth factors (GFs) using tobacco plants as self-sustained, animal-free bioreactors.

A key barrier to the market introduction of cultivated meat is that production costs are very high, resulting in a very expensive end-product. Achieving cost parity with whole cuts of meat has thus far proven impossible owing to the cost of the growth factors needed in the preparation of cultivated meat.  This is where Biobetter's exciting technology comes in.  Amit Yaari, Ph.D., CEO of BioBetter, explains: “Cultivated meat is still very expensive in comparison to conventional meat, and the key is to reduce the growth medium costs to a minimum. 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 100-fold less than the going rate today.”

With environmental safety and efficiency at the core of Biobetter's approach, the tobacco plants 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.

With the capacity to produce 100kg of tobacco plant-derived growth factors daily, Biobetter aims to produce 5 tons of growth factor by 2025.

Certainly, the cultivated meat industry is excited to work with Biobetter. “Over the past year, our outreach and collaborations expanded considerably,” explains Dana Yarden, M.D., co-founder of BioBetter, “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.”

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