CULT Food Science Corp announced that its portfolio company CELL AG TECH has signed an agreement with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) to scale-up its manufacturing process for cell-based fish products.
CELL AG will collaborate with the Toronto, Ontario-based CCRM to develop a cost-effective and efficient manufacturing process for fish cells in bioreactors, which will significantly advance its technology and product quality, the company said.
“A collaboration with CCRM aligns well with our development strategy, where we focus on our core expertise while benefiting from and leveraging the experience, capabilities and infrastructure of organizations that excel in complementary fields important to cellular agriculture,” said Josh Pollack, co-founder of CELL AG, in a statement.
“Working with the best organizations in their respective fields and being recognized nationally for our continued development as a company will allow us to efficiently accomplish our goals,” he added.
READ: CULT Food Science invests in cell manufacturing innovator Unicorn Biotechnologies
The scalability of cell-based fish in the cellular agriculture sector is still a work in progress, CULT said, but noted that cultured fish could become quite popular due to the overwhelming issues that traditional fish production creates such as illegal fishing and overfishing, warming ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, animal welfare and concerns about food waste.
The opportunity to scale-up is vital for CELL AG, one of the few cellular agriculture companies in the world focused solely on the production of sustainable cell-cultured seafood, and CULT believes the agreement will help the portfolio company supply consumers with cultured fish in a sustainable and economical manner.
“We are excited about the agreement between CELL AG and CCRM and the potential possibilities that could stem from the arrangement. The development of cell-based fish is critical in creating a better future around the world," CULT CEO Lejjy Gafour said.
“We're very encouraged by the progress and partnerships that CELL AG has made thus far and the team here at CULT is here to support the portfolio company in its endeavours, which are in alignment with ours,” he added.
CCRM is a leader in developing and commercializing regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies, and receives funding from the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario and leading academic and industry partners.
Separately, CULT said CELL AG was announced as a winner of the AcCELLerate-ON competition for its pitch on how it intends to grow snapper cells in 2D and 3D, to lay the foundation for commercial scale production and commercialization.
CELL AG also focused its pitch on completing proteomic assessments that will be performed on muscle precursor cells from 2D and 3D cultures to determine the differences in protein expression between 2D and 3D, to regulate the environment the cells are grown in for optimal outcomes, to better understand the nutritional value of the grown cells, and to provide data for eventual regulatory processes, it added.
AcCELLerate-ON is Canada’s first regional cellular agriculture competition to fund cutting-edge food and beverage projects in the name of cell-based food production, Cult noted.
“It is a wonderful accomplishment for the portfolio company to be noticed as one of the winners of the AcCELLerate-ON competition. We are very proud of the hard work and tenacity that CELL AG has showcased,” commented Gafour.
The first-of-its-kind investment platform in North America, CULT aims to provide individual investors with unprecedented exposure to the most innovative start-up, private or early-stage cultivated meat, cell-based dairy and other cultured food companies around the world.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com