In recent years, the cultivated meat industry has made significant strides in various facets of production, from media formulations to cell lines. However, according to Mission Barns, a San Francisco-based startup, the economics of cultivated meat won’t be viable unless the industry develops new bioreactors specifically designed for high-volume, low-value food production, rather than the low-volume, high-value pharmaceutical applications they currently serve.
Founded in 2018 by Dr. Eitan Fischer, a former scientist at Eat Just, Mission Barns is pioneering the cultivation of pork fat in proprietary bioreactors. These bioreactors, the company claims, can dramatically enhance the efficiency of the production process. The cultivated fat is then combined with plant-based proteins to create meat alternatives like sausages and bacon. Pending regulatory approval, Mission Barns plans to launch its finished products at select outlets next year to validate its product and process. The company ultimately aims to become a B2B supplier of fat to the plant-based and cultivated meat industry.
Unlike some other startups in the field, Mission Barns is not genetically engineering naturally adherent cells to grow in standard stir-tank bioreactors in liquid suspension, as explained by Saam Shahrokhi, the company’s VP of Technology. “We’re engineering systems to [work with] the cells, rather than engineering cells to work with traditional systems [bioreactors],” Shahrokhi told AgFunderNews. He emphasized that existing bioreactors are ineffective for producing non-GM cultivated muscle and fat.
Current bioreactors, like single-cell suspension stir tank models, can achieve high cell densities and make cell harvesting relatively straightforward. However, these bioreactors are poorly suited for fat cells, which tend to become buoyant and crowd at the liquid surface, consuming local nutrients and oxygen and disrupting the vessel’s homogeneity. While increasing the mixing rate can help, it risks damaging the cells. Moreover, these bioreactors are not well-equipped to facilitate cell differentiation and tissue formation, which are crucial for creating complex meat structures.
To bridge these gaps, Mission Barns has engineered a novel adherent bioreactor system designed to fit the cells’ natural growth preferences. “We’ve created a cell culture system that addresses the limitations of existing adherent culture and suspension culture bioreactors and allows us to scale the production of cultivated meat or fat without the need to modify the cells,” Shahrokhi explained. The bioreactor boasts high volumetric productivity, efficient mass transfer, and dense cell packing without compromising harvestability. It also uses animal-component-free cell culture media and non-GMO cells.
The bioreactor’s design separates cell flow from fluid flow, allowing thorough mixing without exposing cells to excessive shear forces. This design also simplifies the harvesting process. “We simply pump in a dissociation solution, which gets the cells off our reusable food-grade substrate, and then we pump out the cells within the dissociation solution,” Shahrokhi said. This method ensures that the cells are already differentiated into fat cells, streamlining downstream processes.
Mission Barns’ focus on growing fat rather than muscle offers several advantages. The media cost is lower, primarily using glucose instead of amino acids, and the oxygen demand of fat cells is significantly less than that of muscle cells. Additionally, the differentiation and maturation process for fat cells is mechanically simpler. “Right now, we’re focused on pig fat, but the advantage of our bioreactor is that it’s cell line agnostic, so a lot of the process development we do is applicable to fat of all kinds of species,” Shahrokhi noted.
To date, Mission Barns has conducted over 100 successful runs in its pilot facility in San Francisco. With continued improvements in media use efficiency, bioprocess scale-up innovation, and supply chain optimization, the company believes it can achieve price parity with conventional pork. Deputy CEO Cecilia Chang outlined their dual business model: a B2C approach for quick market entry and proof of concept, and a B2B strategy for scaling faster through technology licensing to large players with existing infrastructure.
While some existing alternative meat brands may hesitate to incorporate cultivated animal fat, Chang believes this could create a new category. “For most consumers, what matters is that food tastes delicious, and is ideally good for them, sustainable, and humane,” she said. Even small amounts of animal fat can significantly enhance the eating experience of meat alternatives, making this innovation a potentially game-changing development in the cultivated meat industry.