Nov.23, 2017

Integriculture Inc. starts joint research with Japan Science and Technology Agency on cellular agriculture

Integriculture Inc., a cellular agriculture company aiming to reform modern food system through cultivated meat has signed a commissioned research contract with Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the title of “Development of clean meat (cultured meat)”. This is the first case of a National Research and Development Agency in Japan explicitly funding cellular agriculture research.

This study aims commercialization of cultivated meat by 1) developing low-cost culture medium free from animal sourced compounds and 2) demonstrating a scalable flow-based closed-loop cell culture system.

For details, please refer to the following announcement.

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Integriculture Inc. starts joint research with Japan Science and Technology Agency on cellular agriculture

Integriculture Inc., a cellular agriculture company aiming to reform modern food system through cultivated meat has signed a commissioned research contract with Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the title of “Development of cultivated meat”.

The joint research will be conducted under the project “Next Generation Protein Diet: Research, Development and Innovation” as a practical part of JST Advanced Program for Program Manager‘s Candidate Hub. The joint research will be supervised by Dr. Jun-ichi Aikawa (RIKEN) as a 2nd stage -PM trainee in the program.

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Cellular Agriculture

Cellular agriculture is an interdisciplinary branch of science at the intersection of medicine and farming. Cellular agriculture capitalizes on breakthroughs in tissue-engineering, material sciences, bioengineering, and synthetic biology to design new ways of producing common agricultural products. Clean meat production by cell culture is one of the applications of cellular agriculture.

Integriculture Inc.,

Integriculture Inc. develops low-cost large scale cell culture system that enables industrial cellular agriculture such as cultivated meat production.

Cultivated meat production used to cost more than $100,000/kg in 2013, but food grade animal-free culture medium and continuous flow based cell culture system developed at Integriculture Inc. has driven the cost down to ~$300/kg equivalent in laboratory scale.

JST Advanced Program for Program Manager’s Candidate Hub

JST aims to nurture Program Managers (PM) responsible for the planning, execution and management of R&D projects that have abundant potential for innovation. To do so, JST implements a practical development program to give participants necessary knowledge and skills and that provides them with practical training in planning and proposing projects that they manage on their own as PM. This program targets persons in charge of corporate planning and R&D, persons with experience in the management of R&D activities at universities and research institutes, and staff at institutions that allocate funds.

Details of the joint research with JST

Integriculture Inc. verifies the intercellular induction of hepatocyte growth and retainment of hepatocyte functionality in this joint research with JST. By automating the hepatocyte growth stimulation demonstrator setup, operation parameters of flow-based continuous cell culture system shall be optimized.

This joint research will be conducted under the supervision of Dr. Jun-ichi Aikawa (RIKEN) as a 2nd stage -PM trainee in the program.

Future expectations

A National Research and Development Agency joining and leading this exciting nascent field of cellular agriculture marks an important moment for public recognition of “cellular agriculture”, development of future food and the solution for the global food problem.

The achievements from this joint research is expected to pave the way for the cellular agriculture startup to enter $2 trillion global protein market as well as improving food security status of certain import-reliant countries like Japan.

Integriculture’s culture medium

Integriculture Inc. greatly reduces the cost of culture medium by replacing fetal bovine serum (FBS) commonly used in the conventional medium with “FBS substitutes” found in common food.

By integrating the substitutes with our networked culture system ‘“CulNet system”, Integriculture Inc. reduces medium cost down to $0.10/L, that is, to 1/1000 of conventional medium.

Integriculture’s patented cell coculture system (“CulNet system”)

By culturing muscle cells with cells that separately produce growth factors in connected bioreactors, “CulNet system” utilizing our original low cost-culture medium enables highly efficient production of cultivated meat.

Unlike conventional disposable batch systems, “CulNet system” grows cells through continuous flow process, enabling that the system will be expanded through parallelization as well as increasing volume.

【Contact】

Integriculture Inc.（Attn: Yuki Hanyu）

E-mail: info@integriculture.jp