Cultivated meat from cows: How Omeat uses plasma to grow beef

Renowned tissue engineer and medical bioengineer Ali Kademhosseini saw it differently when he began thinking about entering the cultivated meat field.

Many companies that make meat from cells leave traditionally farmed animals out of consideration entirely, but Kadem Hosseini didn’t think it was necessary.

“The general idea is that animals are not necessarily bad,” says Kademhosseini. “The Earth has been inhabited by many animals for hundreds of millions of years. But that’s how we really do it. That’s the number of animals, and that’s the really big challenge.”

Today, out of stealth, Kadem Hosseini’s company, Omut, uses animals to produce cultured meat. Instead of using pharmaceutical grade ingredients or cell growth media derived from extracted fetal bovine serum, Omeat manufactures it from plasma collected from herds of cattle. Plasma contains a variety of nutrients and elements that allow cells to grow naturally, Kademhosseini said.

The result, he said, is a cost-effective, humane and sustainable way to produce cultured meat. Through this process, Ommieto gets 20 times more beef per cow than he would if slaughtered.

The company has already received considerable attention from funders and others in the cultivated meat space. Last year, the company raised $40 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round with participation from Tyson Ventures, Google Ventures and S2G Ventures.

Khademhosseini said the company took early notice of the fact that Omeat’s method is scalable and can produce cultivated beef more quickly at the same cost as conventional beef. Omeat also relies on traditional animal husbandry for its business model.

“This company seeks to build a bridge between the lab-grown meat industry and nearly every existing food, manufacturing and supply world, from cattle to sustainable farming types of people,” he said. rice field.

Usage

Compared to other cultivated meat companies, Omeat is very similar, yet very different.

Omeat operates a traditional cattle farm. Herds of cattle graze on farms in California that provide both the cells to make meat and the medium they need to grow.

But the company’s lab-grown meat R&D facility, like the pilot plant Omut is currently building near Los Angeles, looks and functions like other lab-grown meat companies. Kademhosseini said Omeat uses similar bioreactors to grow its cells, but the contents are all from real cows.

This kind of structure makes Omeat easier to scale, said Kadem Hosseini. As your company grows, you can partner with existing farmers who can supply you with everything you need to grow your meat. These items may be sent to the company’s manufacturing facility.

“I think this is a perfectly logical thing to do,” said Kadem Hosseini. “That simplicity, that’s the beauty, that’s the interesting thing.”

Kademhosseini said that the culture medium from bovine plasma alone can achieve cell yields similar to other cultivated meat companies. Omeat has refined its system in its own bioreactor facility and added some bioprocess improvements that have increased yields by 20% to 30% over his, he said.

Reach cost parity quickly

Khademhosseini has been working on Omeat for about four years, but the company has largely been in the shadows.

The reason it is now out of stealth is because it has accomplished one of its key objectives.

“We have developed a process where basically all the ingredients are available at the cost of making meat comparable to the price,” he said. “So it’s important at this point to really scale.”

Cell growth media are the most expensive component for many cultivated meat companies.

Some of the substances used for cell proliferation were previously only used in pharmaceuticals.they They tend to be expensive to meet standards for quantity, concentration, and food production. The other common ingredient, fetal bovine serum, which reliably provides beneficial nutrients for cell growth, is actually derived from animals and is not cheaply available.

Many cultivated meat companies are partnering with pharmaceutical, biologics, and animal nutrition companies to create new supply chains to solve the problem of plant-based solutions and growing media. But for Omeat, this supply chain is pastured on their own farms.

Plasma is taken from the cows every week, Kademhosseini said. The process developed by Omeat is very similar to that used for human plasma donation, he said. Unlike blood, plasma is quickly regenerated, so cows do not feel exhausted.

The plasma also contains components that can completely replace fetal bovine serum in the growth medium, Kademhosseini said. This is something other lab-grown meat companies struggle with.

Ann The analysis was published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Research In December, it was found that cell culture media still make up the largest portion of the cost of cultivated meat. $64 per kilo.Media accounted for 31% Estimated costs beyond labor, equipment and logistics.

“Our results show that the industry needs to focus on reducing capital, labor and media costs if it wants to compete on price with meats such as beef, pork and chicken.” the report said.

Ommeat is currently focused on making ground beef products, but Kadem Hosseini said the bovine plasma solution serves as a growth medium for other animal cells. He said the company has conducted experiments and can grow chicken, pork and lamb in the same way.

scale up

Omut is working straight away get the product Kadem Hosseini said:

The company is working to build a pilot facility that should be operational by the end of 2023, he said.

And Mr. Kadem Hosseini said: In collaboration with the FDA and U.S. regulatory agencies, USDA must get approval for the process. If all goes according to plan, the company could have a product on the market by his 2025.

But the scale-up plan doesn’t stop at building bioreactors. Kademhosseini envisions partnering with existing livestock farmers to obtain cells and plasma from herds. He’s been working on breaking into that community, he said, but it’s been difficult.

Kadem Hosseini, who has a medical background, didn’t have much contact with livestock farmers.at the same time, Traditional livestock farmers do not welcome alternative proteins.

Kadem Hosseini said he went to the farm and “knocked on the door and tried to tell them why they wanted to partner with them.” It was really interesting to see this guy who doesn’t interact much bridge the two worlds. ”

Kademhosseini wants to spend the rest of 2023 expanding the technology side of the business, building relationships with traditional farmers and improving the product.

The OmMeat process can produce meat at the same cost as the current Big Meat program, but with 95% fewer cattle, he said.According to his 2017 statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock feed and production is 77% of total agricultural land use.

Kademhosseini, who describes himself as a traditional meat eater, said he had long wanted to use his knowledge to make a difference in the world.

“Even though I was doing other kinds of work in the medical and innovation fields, I thought that this was the most impactful thing I could do if the product was in the real world,” he said. “Sustainability has really been my biggest driver.”