Alternative Protein Solutions Database
Discover ideas for new startups, commercial ventures and products, research projects, ecosystem support, and investment opportunities for plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-derived proteins.
Additional Filters
Cultivated
Fermentation
Plant-Based
| Opportunity | Production platform | Value chain segment | Technology sector | End product focus | Relevant actor | Maturity level | Solution category | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Incorporating growth factors into scaffolds to reduce costs and introduce spatial heterogeneity
Growth factors (GFs) can be incorporated into scaffolds as a strategy for both reducing costs and improving product quality of cultivated meat. Open-access research is needed to test the feasibility… |
Cultivated
|
End Products Production R&D | Scaffolding | Seafood-relevant | Academics Industry Startups | Commercial Research | ||
|
Promoting stemness and proliferation in fish cell cultures
Efficient and cost-effective cultivated fish production will require precise optimization to encourage fast proliferation and highly efficient use of inputs while preventing premature differentiation. A variety of strategies can be… |
Cultivated
|
Production R&D | Cell culture media Cell line development | Seafood | Academics Industry Startups | Research | Science | |
|
B2B media development company
The cultivated meat industry needs dedicated suppliers of low-cost, food-grade cell culture media to reduce cultivated meat production costs. Close collaboration between the customer and supplier will be required in… |
Cultivated
|
R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media | Seafood-relevant | Industry Investors Startups | Commercial Research | ||
|
Life Cycle Assessment for alternative seafood relative to conventional fishing and aquaculture
To date, no robust environmental assessments have been conducted to compare alternative seafood to its conventional counterparts. An open-access, quantitative analysis of the relative environmental impacts of alternative seafood will… |
Cultivated
Fermentation
Plant-Based
|
Demand Generation Distribution Channels End Products Investment Production R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Seafood | Academics GFI Industry | Research | Science | ||
|
Incorporating omega-3s into cultivated seafood
Cultivated seafood will need to be supplemented with long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids to be nutritionally equivalent or superior to conventional seafood. However, how these compounds can best be incorporated… |
Cultivated
|
Production R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Bioprocess design Cell culture media Cell line development End product formulation & manufacturing Scaffolding | Seafood | Academics Industry Startups | Commercial Research | Industry Science | |
|
Plant-based category marketing
Interest in plant-based products is growing, but many consumers still express skepticism about plant protein foods, or simply lack familiarity with the category. Category marketing campaigns to promote plant-based and… |
Cultivated
Fermentation
Plant-Based
|
Demand Generation Distribution Channels End Products | Seafood-relevant | Donors Industry NGO’s Policymakers Startups | Commercial Ecosystem Policy | Industry Policy | ||
|
B2B growth factors for proliferation
There is a need for a supplier of low-cost growth factors produced without the use of animals to support the proliferation phase of cultivated meat production. The cost of growth… |
Cultivated
|
R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media | Seafood-relevant | Industry Startups | Commercial | Industry Science | |
|
Co-cultured support cells for cultivated meat
Cultivated meat research focuses primarily on muscle fibers and fat cells. However, other cell types serve functions that are often under appreciated in their relevance to cultivated meat. Co-culture methods… |
Cultivated
|
Production R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Bioprocess design Cell culture media Cell line development | Seafood-relevant | Academics Industry Startups | Commercial Research | Science | |
|
Biomaterials for scaffolding
A handful of companies and researchers are developing scaffold materials for use in various steps of the cultivated meat production process, but to date the topic of scaffolding has been… |
Cultivated
|
R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Scaffolding | Seafood-relevant | Academics Industry Startups | Commercial Research | Industry Science | |
|
Metabolic modeling for cultivated meat
Academic researchers or consortia consisting of several cultivated meat companies should undertake research aimed at understanding metabolic pathways and fluxes within cultivated meat-relevant cell types. The outputs of this research… |
Cultivated
|
R&D | Bioprocess design Cell culture media Cell line development | Seafood-relevant | Academics Industry Investors Startups | Research | Science |
Get involved
If you’d like to fund a research project, work on any of these solutions, share information about related efforts that are already underway, or elevate new ideas for advancing the alternative protein industry, we’d love to hear from you!
Explore key innovation priorities
Review commercial whitespaces, research gaps, technological needs, and investment priorities at each stage of the alternative protein value chain.
How we built this
Full report
Delve into the full report on the motivation, methodology, rationale, and key findings and recommendations of the Solutions initiative.
Futures wheels analysis
Explore our framework for uncovering second-order or third-order consequences and implications of hypothetical future scenarios to support better decision-making in the present.
Future-proofing
Discover key findings from GFI’s premortem analysis of potential threats to the widespread adoption of alternative proteins, including strategies to avoid or mitigate the most pressing risks.
