In a recent WIRED article highlights our partnership with The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit aiming to produce animal protein alternatives. We are happy to help support, grow, and assist in the development of the cultured meat industry by providing the required materials essential to the field.

This industry relies on the availability of reliable, stable, easy-to-access cell lines in order to experiment, discover, and grow. The immortality component associated to such cell lines makes them highly desirable as they produce near-identical copies of themselves for over decades. Elliot Swartz, a scientist at GFI notes: “There’s basically nowhere to start yet. If anyone wants to get into this field, it takes a significant amount of resources and time to acquire and characterize a cell line in-house.” Cell lines are a barrier of entry to this space and moreover, a deterrent from linking further growth within the field as there are a scare amount of cell lines available to serve this purpose.

In February 2020, The Good Food Institute began to establish an effort to ease this barrier of entry by allowing researchers world-wide to deposit their cultured meat cell lines with Kerafast. To our excitement, our Dicentrachus labrax (European Sea Bass) Embryonic Cell Line (DLEC), available to order here, has been found to be a successful candidate thus far. By facilitating access to these unique cell lines, the goal is to accelerate research toward creating cultivated meat and seafood.

Swartz continues to emphasize cow cell lines are highly desirable. GFI has arranged research funding to develop cell lines from chickens, cows, pigs, and duck. With the right cell lines, cultured meat has the potential to reduce negative environmental impacts existing as a result of high-end dining, dinner events and functions, etc. However, in order to do so, scientists need to find the perfect starting cell lines to work with. To continue, we hope our partnership with GFI continues to connect researchers to other available cell lines and open new opportunities allowing this niche field to expand to its full potential.

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Related Research

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