Extracellular, a UK-based contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), is offering cultivated meat and seafood players expertise in media and process development, and scale-up. The company believes that current cell line procurement processes are hindering research. According to the company, animal primary cells relevant for cultivated meat research are expensive, poor quality and come with limited information regarding their performance or provenance.
Moreover, their use is restricted by licensing or commercial ingredients which Extracellular believes can impede innovative technologies and approaches in this burgeoning field.
To overcome these challenges, the CDMO has launched low-cost, licence-free cell banks to support cultivated meat research. The cell banks initially offer cells isolated from the fat, muscle and bone marrow tissues of cow, pig and lamb. Extracellular plans to add seafood and avian primary cell banks within the next 12 months.
The cell bank initiative is designed to support early-stage companies and researchers in this sector by providing high-quality animal primary cells that are suitable for cultivated meat R&D, are up to 90% cheaper than other cell line providers, and free from licensing restrictions. Information on the cells’ provenance, including age, breed and sex of the animal, as well as passage numbers and expected population doubling times, will be included with each batch.
The team optimised cell isolation protocols and used its expertise in high-throughput research to produce the banks, which will prioritise the advancement of cultivated meat research and innovation over profit, according to Dr Will Milligan, co-founder and CEO of Extracellular.
The cell banks have been created with funding from Innovate UK and developed in collaboration with Multus Biotechnology, a developer of food-safe growth media. Multus provided protocols and key materials to de-risk the cell bank project, in addition to independent quality control for cell identification, cryopreservation and growth characterisation.
Extracellular has already received requests for the cell lines from a ‘wide range’ of companies and institutions, said Dr Milligan, from companies developing cell lines who are looking for starting materials, to established cultivated meat companies looking for new sources of cells, to academic research groups looking to start research in cultivated meat.
By making industry-specific cells accessible and shortening times to market, Extracellular hopes to enable cultivated meat companies to focus their efforts on market differentiation, quality, scale and sustainability.
