Cell Based Tech Weekly – JUST Aims for 2021 Op Profit, Higher Steaks Moves, Industrializing Cell Based Meat Conference Kudos

In a recent Reuters article, CEO of JUST, Josh Tetrick stated the company aims to return an operating profit before the end of 2021, at which point the company will consider an IPO. 

To cut costs, Tetrick said the company needs to find ways to extract more protein from mung beans, and buy more beans from its suppliers in East Africa and Asia so it can negotiate lower costs.  

Why We Care: JUST would be the first direct to consumer “almost-pure-play” cell ag company to come public in the U.S. Although JUST is generating all of its revenue and eventual operating profits from plant based products, we believe the company is continuously growing their cell based meat R&D. Currently, JUST is hiring a bioprocessing position to work with animal cell cultures developing media, operating bioreactors and harvesting cells. JUST’s first cell based meat product will likely be chicken nuggets composed of cell cultured chicken blended with mung bean protein isolate. 

Higer Steaks Moves HQ

UK Cell based meat company Higher Steaks relocates to Cambridge Science Park, a collaborative community of deep tech and life sciences based companies. 

• Cambridge Science Park is also home to potential cell based meat enabling technology companies including Sigma Aldrich. Cambridge Science Park is also looking to recruit additional scientists in stem cells, bioprocessing and tissue engineering. https://cellbased.link/zj8

Kudos to Industrializing Cell Based Meat Conference

This past week I attended (virtually) the Industrializing Cell Based Meat Conference. It was nice to meet those of you I had the pleasure of connecting with over speed networking for the first time → a fantastic feature that actually seemed like a more efficient networking experience then in person!

Takeaways:

• Cell culture media and scaffold were at the forefront of discussions:
  • Molecular farming technology to reduce the cost of growth factor production;
  • Various technological approaches for de-cellularized scaffolding and electrospinning.
    
• Paul Shapiro, CEO of Better Meat Co. brought up some interesting perspectives about the importance of an “all of the above” strategy to reduce factory farming — this means looking at plant based, cell based, and hybridized solutions.
  • This hybridized space is a white space for innovation to develop science around the best ways to blend animal proteins with plant and cell based materials marrying ingredients and flavors to make more delicious products that incrementally reduce animal inputs.

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