BioBetter has uncovered a new application for the much-maligned Nicotiana tabacum tobacco plant upon discovering it can overcome the greatest hurdle in cultured meat – that of scaled production.

In addition to presenting a cost-effective source of growth factors for protein cultivation, the Israeli food-tech player envisions this as an alternative revenue stream for tobacco producers amid health conscious societal shifts.

Conventional cell growth media has come under criticism not just for its high price, but for its composition of fetal bovine serum sourced from cows, which large industry stakeholders such as Aleph Farms and Wacker have made moves to eliminate by developing new alternatives.

“In general, we are aiming for cellular agriculture technologies,” Amit Yaari, CEO of BioBetter, tells FoodIngredientsFirst. “The most advanced of these is of course cultivated meat, but we also serve cultivated eggs, milk, honey, leather or any other food oriented application that requires growth factors.”

“These markets differ in their requirement for food grade factors – relatively low purity, low cost factors that will be required in huge quantities.”

The entire process of producing tobacco-based growth factors is performed on off-the-shelf, readily available and scalable equipment, and avoids usage of expensive custom made or pharma grade equipment, which would bottleneck and limit production scale, Yaari notes.

BioBetter harnessed the inherent advantages of tobacco plants by turning them into bioreactors for expression and large-scale production of the proteins.Oded Shoseyov, founder and researcher at BioBetter, adds: “Our growth factor technology will enable production of animal-free growth factors at a scale of thousands of metric tons per year, and at a cost of US$1 per gram. This will alleviate one of the biggest bottlenecks in advancing cultured meat to mass production.”

Unraveling the complexities of growth factors
As numerous cultivated meat start-ups move beyond the proof-of-concept phase, they run against one of the biggest challenges facing this budding industry. Developing a scalable and cost-effective production platform to make cultured meat affordable for the mass market has proven to be a primary stumbling block.

Cell-derived meat requires a culture medium composed of a mix of amino acids, nutrients and – most importantly – growth factors without which cells cannot multiply. Currently, such media are costly due to the complexity of producing growth factors. 

For example, insulin and transferrin growth factors are collected from livestock, making it difficult to obtain large quantities. Some can be attained via fermentation of yeast or bacteria, but those methods require expensive facilities. The purification process also is complicated and expensive.

“The Good Food Institutes determined that approximately a 100-fold reduction in insulin and transferrin costs is required to make cultivated meat economically viable,” explains Dana Yarden, co-founder of BioBetter. “It is estimated that growth factors and cell-culture media can constitute 55% to 95% of the marginal cost in manufacturing cell-based foods.”

Earlier this year, pioneering cell-based player Mosa Meat published a peer-reviewed paper revealing how it achieves muscle differentiation in cultured meat without the use of fetal bovine serum and without genetically modifying the cells in any way.

In other moves, the UK-based CPI technology innovation center partnered with 3D Bio-Tissues – a spin-out of Newcastle University – to develop a new kind of improved growth media, one that is “truly animal-free.”

Green, animal-free solution
Working behind the scenes of the emerging cultured meat industry, BioBetter is responding to a prominent gap in the supply chain with its “landmark botanical breakthrough.”

BioBetter harnessed the inherent advantages of tobacco plants by turning them into bioreactors for expression and large-scale production of the proteins. Plant bioreactors use renewable energy and fixate CO2. They are self-forming, self-sustaining and biodegradable.

BioBetter uses open-field plantations to enable fast, efficient, and flexible response to market needs, the company states.

BioBetter management team (Credit: BioBetter).“There are multiple advantages to using Nicotiana tabacum as a hardy vector for producing growth factors of non-animal origin,” says Amit Yaari, PhD, CEO of BioBetter. “It is an abundant crop that has no place in the food-and-feed chain due to its extremely bitter taste and content of undesirable alkaloids.”

“The global trend for reducing tobacco smoking also is raising concerns among tobacco growers that the crop might eventually become obsolete. Yet the tobacco plant has huge potential to become a key component in the future of food.” 

In addition to having a large biomass, tobacco plants can achieve up to four growth cycles annually and be harvested all year. This translates to more voluminous outputs per square meter of growing space.

BioBetter uses a proprietary protein extraction and purification technology that enables it to exploit nearly the entire plant, and at the same time deliver a high purity product at broad scale production. 

The company currently sources tobacco plants from local growers but the goal is to eventually source the raw material from tobacco growers globally. based on cultivation in open fields and BioBetter’s proprietary purification technology, the cost of growth factors production is dramatically reduced, finally bringing cost efficiency to cultured meat production.

BioBetter background
Improving the cost margins of growth media production is one of the drivers of price parity between cell-based protein and traditional meat. Analysis by Dutch research organization CE Delft found that cultivated meat may hit competitive cost and environmental benchmarks by 2030. 

BioBetter was founded by Oded Shoseyov, a serial entrepreneur and researcher at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Dana Yarden, a biotech business expert; and Avi Tzur, an industrialist with a vision to put tobacco plants to positive use and who also was the first investor in the technology. 

One of the company’s first tobacco plant-based creations was the drug "Humira,” a monoclonal antibody used to treat autoimmune diseases. Realizing the great gap in the supply of growth factors for the fast-growing cultivated food niche of the alt protein scene, the company shifted its focus to filling that gap. 

The start-up already raised US$5 million for its growth factor production platform from private investors, including Institutional VC and Alpha Capital Anstalt. The company participates in the Israel Innovation Authority program and the Good Food Institute, which also helps support the company’s financing.