Biotech start-up Tiamat Sciences is developing a new environment for growing meat without slaughter. The start-up specialises in creating growth factors that can stimulate the development of living cells. Tiamat Sciences expects to reinvent the biomolecule that will replace existing bioreactors and make the production of cultured meat cheaper than that produced by raising livestock and poultry in conventional farming.
Tiamat Sciences founder and CEO France-Emmanuel Adil estimates that the actual production of growth factors today costs $2 million per gram. The high cost of the process also raises the price of cultured meat, a product grown in the laboratory from cells of real animals. Tiamat Sciences claims to know how to make growth factors significantly cheaper - the startup is prepared to cut production costs by a factor of 10 in the next few months and then make growth factors available to almost any producer - 1,000 times cheaper by 2025, Techcrunch reports.
Tiamat Sciences' patented platform uses temporal expression, vertical cultivation and a data-driven approach to design and produce next-generation proteins. The system is currently in closed trials - the startup is not revealing details about its technology and promises to reveal more when its first production facility in Durham, North Carolina is up and running.
Tiamat Sciences' customer list is also being kept under wraps, but Adil says the first companies have already ordered test samples of growth factors and expect to receive them by the end of the year. Once the first products have been tested, the startup will move on to partnering arrangements. In addition to food, Taimat Sciences' approach will also be applied to pharmaceuticals - the developer cites vaccine production and regenerative medicine as important sectors for its key products.
"The growth factors are transferable to other sectors because the processes are similar. We will be working on expansion until the end of 2022. And we will be scaling up very quickly," Adil added.
Tiamat Sciences recently raised $3 million in seed funding in a round led by True Ventures with participation from Social Impact Capital and Cantos. Before the seed round, the startup had time to close a small $400,000 round and move its headquarters from Belgium to North Carolina. Tiamat Sciences is now looking for partners to build its first pilot production facility.