GFI scientists in Biochem Journal: Time to collaborate

Our SciTech team’s latest publication urges collaboration between the clean meat and biomedical fields.
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GFI scientists make the case for collaboration between the biomedical and clean meat industries in a new peer-reviewed paper in Biochemical Engineering Journal, which promotes progress for a wide range of biotechnologies.   

Perhaps a surprising connection on its face, the link between clean meat and the biomedical field is obvious at the second glance. Clean meat’s earliest developments were only made possible by advances in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. In fact, it was during a procedure to regrow heart valve tissue in a patient that then-cardiologist Dr. Uma Valeti first thought of using tissue engineering to produce meat! In case you missed it, Dr. Valeti is now the CEO (and co-founder) of UPSIDE Foods, the clean meat company backed by Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Cargill, Tyson, and more.

Gfi senior scientist dr. Liz specht tries clean duck from upside foods
GFI Senior Scientist Dr. Liz Specht tries clean duck from UPSIDE Foods

Clean meat is a novel application of biomedical technology with tremendous growth potential, along with the tremendous potential to positively impact public health on a grand scale. Research to bring down costs to scale up clean meat production will, in turn, bring down costs for other cell-based therapies in biomedicine. 

That’s a win on all sides. 

As such, GFI is working to streamline the flow of information between these industries to accelerate the rate of innovation and scale up clean meat production as quickly as possible!    

Thus far, biomedical experts are excited about the possibilities: GFI scientists were warmly received at the Scale Up conference for cell-based therapies (read: regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, etc.), and even took second place in a poster competition, despite being the only group repping food tech! 

To check out the abstract or download the full PDF of the article, “Opportunities for Applying Biomedical Production and Manufacturing Methods to the Development of the Clean Meat Industry,” click here!  

Image: Haiku Deck

Author

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Emily Byrd