Where knowledge flows, innovation grows

Sharing knowledge freely

We believe scientific progress is most powerful when widely shared. That’s why we designed our Research Grant Program to support world-class, foundational research. The projects funded by this program aim to fill critical research gaps in the alternative protein ecosystem and broadly share their findings to uplift the ecosystem.

This year, we asked researchers across the globe to bring forward bold ideas that address two persistent bottlenecks:

Functionality from fermentation: identifying and characterizing fermentation-derived ingredients that can meaningfully improve plant-based meat product formulations.
Pathways to propel cell line development: developing new cell lines—or optimizing existing ones—across terrestrial, fish, and crustacean species to strengthen shared research tools for the cultivated meat community.

The response was nothing short of exceptional. Lead organizations from 46 countries submitted proposals, and many of the top-rated projects featured cross-border collaborations that shared knowledge, infrastructure, and best practices to accelerate progress for everyone

Following a vigorous review process led by leading fermentation and cultivated meat scientists from around the world, we identified 12 transformative projects for funding. Without further ado, please meet the teams selected for funding this year.

Unlocking the next generation of fermentation-derived ingredients

This topic area aims to develop ingredients to improve the sensory experience of plant-based meat products, such as enhancements in color, flavor, and texture. Achieving taste parity remains a challenge, though new binders that approximate animal connective tissue, flavor compounds that closely resemble those in animal products, and colorants that imitate the red-to-brown transition of meat are narrowing the gap. Flavors that closely resemble animal-based products and/or mask the off-flavors of plant proteins are crucial for achieving taste parity. Finally, binders and other functional ingredients that provide animal-product-like texture and mouthfeel, using innovative yet familiar ingredients, will improve both product development and consumer adoption. Research within this theme seeks to address currently intractable product development challenges.

Dr. Dimitris Charalampopoulos, Professor of Food Biotechnology at the University of Reading, United Kingdom, plans to utilize red-pigmented yeast cells as an ingredient to create plant-based products that mimic traditional whole-cut meat products by enhancing their color, taste, and texture. The project aims to develop a scalable process for producing these yeast cells, investigate effective blending techniques, and evaluate the cooking quality of the resulting end product.
Dr.-Ing. Ulrike van der Schaaf, Young Investigator Group Leader at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, leads the FabFungi project, which aims to create plant-based meats that perform better in long-cooking applications, such as stews and goulash. The team will combine koji protein from Aspergillus oryzae with faba flours to increase the nutritional value and improve the sensory properties of plant-based meat products.
Dr. Restituto Tocmo, Assistant Professor at the University of Reading, United Kingdom, will lead the YarroPro project to develop hybrid sausage formulations using a novel yeast biomass ingredient produced from Yarrowia lipolytica grown on spent coconut meal, an abundant byproduct of coconut processing, combined with legume-derived proteins. The research team, which includes collaborating scientists from the National University of Singapore and the University of the Philippines Diliman, aims to develop an optimized biomass extrusion process and plant-based sausage formulations with enhanced organoleptic and nutritional profiles.
Dr. Billy Yi Yang, a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, will combine alternative protein science with the art of winemaking in a project that will transform grape marc, a byproduct of winemaking, into a high-value, sustainable, and clean-label food ingredient through bacterial cellulose fermentation. The resulting bacterial cellulose will serve as a natural functional ingredient, providing enhanced water retention, mouthfeel, and nutritional delivery for plant-based meat formulations.
Dr. Yanyan Zhang, Director of the Department of Flavor Chemistry at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, will collaborate with researchers at Northwest University, China, to develop a novel and scalable submerged fermentation system that enhances the kokumi and umami flavors and aromas of plant-based meats. Using Basidiomycota and Allium species, the team aims to create rich, meat-like aromas without the use of artificial flavorings.

Building the foundation of cultivated meat R&D

Access to high-quality cell lines from diverse species, with an array of beneficial phenotypes, is a prerequisite for companies and researchers to scale and optimize the production of cultivated meat and seafood. Achieving this scale and optimization is necessary if cultivated meat is to meaningfully deliver on all its environmental, public health, and animal welfare benefits. This topic sought to address the lack of suitable cell lines, a persistent bottleneck to innovation that requires continued fundamental research and a stronger supply chain to overcome.

Dr. Mario Moisés Alvarez, Professor at the Centro de Biotecnología-FEMSA at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, plans to develop the first spontaneously immortalized lobster myoblast and fibroblast cell lines to address a key bottleneck in the cultivated seafood sector: a lack of scalable, stable crustacean cell sources. Leveraging a novel “immortalization-on-a-chip” strategy that combines milli-fluidic culture platforms and bioprinting, the team will also assess the long-term growth of the cells in serum-free media and their differentiation capacity.
Dr. Alessandro Bertero, Associate Professor at the Molecular Biotechnology Center “Guido Tarone,” University of Torino, Italy, will lead a project aimed at developing a publicly available pluripotent stem cell line derived from a heritage cow breed with a naturally occurring myostatin mutation. The research team will engineer the cell line to develop a platform tailored for scalable, cost-effective biomanufacturing and will also investigate mechanisms for growth factor-free differentiation.
Dr. Joshua Flack, a cell and molecular biologist at TU Delft, Netherlands, will lead a project called Recombinase toolkits for Cellular Agriculture Cell Engineering (ReCACE). ReCACE will address a critical gap in mammalian cultivated meat research by establishing a recombinase-based cell engineering platform. Subsequently, Dr. Flack will use this platform to enhance desirable phenotypes in an established immortalized bovine satellite cell line, which will also be made available to the broader scientific community.
Dr. Trevor Ham, Chief Science Officer at Atlantic Fish Co., USA, will develop and characterize a continuous myoblast cell line from southern flounder, examine methods for improving differentiation, and adapt the cells to grow in suspension and serum-free conditions. Through their research, the team and their collaborators at the University of North Carolina Wilmington hope to inspire traditional agricultural researchers to engage with the alternative protein community.
Dr. Hooman Hefzi, Associate Professor in the Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Technical University of Denmark, leads a project that aims to improve an archetypal bovine satellite cell line, thereby increasing scalability, reducing production costs, and eliminating waste metabolite production. The improved cell line will serve as a starting “chassis strain” that can be further engineered toward other desirable phenotypes and benefit future optimization efforts.
Dr. Lakshmi Mundkur, Director of Research at Umami Bioworks in India, will collaborate with researchers at Nord University, Norway, to establish continuous, suspension-adapted mesenchymal stem cell lines from Atlantic halibut. The team plans to optimize culture conditions for stable, long-term growth and use machine learning to screen cost-effective media formulations that can support the cell lines in serum-free cultures.
Dr. Andrew Stout, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University, USA, will lead a project to engineer a recently developed immortalized bovine fat cell line and maximize its utility for the field. The aim is to optimize the cell line for long-term, stable growth in single-cell suspension and improve its metabolic efficiency in serum-free culture.

Powered by philanthropy

Our work is made possible through the generosity of our global donor community. It is because of the incredible support from our Research Grant Program donors that we will have designated over $27 million USD in research grant funding to support 141 projects across 26 countries by the end of 2025. If you’d like to learn more about how you can fund GFI’s programming, please email us at philanthropy@gfi.org.

Are you interested in applying for funding? Stay on the lookout for our next request for proposals, to be announced in 2026, and explore our curated Research Funding database.

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Author

Elisha Reichling, MS, RDN, LDN RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM MANAGER

Elisha manages GFI’s global Research Grant Program’s request for proposals and grantee portfolio. Areas of expertise: research funding, non-profit leadership, application and review software, process improvement