
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
Opportunity | Production platform | Value chain segment | Technology sector | End product focus | Relevant actor | Maturity level | Solution category | Topic |
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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… |
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R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media | Seafood-relevant | Industry Investors Startups | Commercial Research | ||
Animal-free, non-recombinant albumin and transferrin for cultivated meat
The identification of non-animal, non-recombinant proteins with similar functionality to serum albumin and transferrin will lead to major cost reductions in cell culture media development, facilitating progress toward achieving price… |
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Production R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media Crop development Target molecule selection | Species-agnostic | Academics Industry Investors Startups | Commercial Research | Industry 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… |
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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 | |
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… |
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R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media | Seafood-relevant | Industry Startups | Commercial | Industry Science | |
Cultivated meat makerspaces to promote public engagement
Both the cultivated meat industry and interested members of the general public would benefit from the creation of makerspaces focused on cultivated meat. These would be publicly available spaces where… |
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R&D Workforce | Bioprocess design Cell culture media Cell line development Scaffolding | Species-agnostic | Academics Donors GFI Industry NGO’s Startups | Ecosystem Research | 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… |
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Production R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Bioprocess design Cell culture media Cell line development | Seafood-relevant | Academics Industry Startups | Commercial Research | 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… |
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R&D | Bioprocess design Cell culture media Cell line development | Seafood-relevant | Academics Industry Investors Startups | Research | Science | |
Understanding uptake and interconversion of omega-3 fatty acids by cultivated fish cells
Although fish are one of the best dietary sources of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (FAs), these compounds are mostly bioaccumulated from a fish’s diet rather than synthesized de novo. Consistent… |
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R&D Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media Cell line development Host strain development | Seafood | Academics Industry Startups | Commercial Research | Science | |
Forging product development partnerships among ingredient suppliers and manufacturers
Opportunities exist to coordinate product development partnerships between ingredient suppliers, strategic partners, and product manufacturers to directly engage more holistically on product formulation. |
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End Products Production Raw Materials, Ingredients, & Inputs | Cell culture media Crop development Feedstocks Ingredient optimization Scaffolding | Species-agnostic | GFI Industry | 1 – Inception | Commercial Ecosystem | Industry Science |
Species-specific research toolkits for cultivated meat-relevant species
Coordinated efforts to develop standardized, comprehensive research toolkits of meat-relevant species would exponentially accelerate cultivated meat research. |
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Compliance R&D | Cell culture media Cell line development End product formulation & manufacturing | Seafood-relevant | Academics GFI Industry NGO’s Startups | Commercial Ecosystem 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.