Biotech with a Scalable Scaffolding System for Cultivated Meat
Meat production is very resource-intensive and has significant animal welfare issues. When you start looking into it, there are a lot of scary statistics surrounding meat production. We produce 30 billion animals a year for food. Pastures take up 25% of ice-free land across the world and more than 40% of the world’s deforestation has been caused by land clearing for beef production. At least 26% of the fresh water and 40% of grain consumed each year is used for meat production.
Many people believe that cultivated meat is a more sustainable solution, but the industry is young and current systems are time-consuming, low-yield, and expensive. So far, it has been almost impossible to scale the mechanical processes required for cultivated meat production.
Micro Meat, a Y combinator-backed Mexican biotech startup, wants to solve this problem. They are a B2B company developing technology to help cultivated meat companies scale production and produce affordable and sustainable alternatives to traditionally farmed meat.
Micro Meat’s proprietary scaffolding system can increase the yield of cultivated meat by 1000x so companies can scale to produce kilograms or even tonnes of meat. Their scaffolds can be used to produce 3D meat products like steaks. Micro Meat’s system uses biocompatible and biodegradable macro carriers that can be used to produce any type of meat or fat from plant-based ingredients. The macro carriers provide the ideal environment for cells to grow and differentiate regardless of the scale of the production so companies can use massive production-scale reactors. The macro carriers also improve cell viability and growth, ultimately reducing waste and costs.
Micro Meat’s technology combines tissue engineering with fluid and mechanical systems. They needed a digital operating system to manage their inventory, samples, and data during in-house platform development and to run surveys with existing and new customers.
Micro Meat chose Scispot as their digital operating system. Scispot set up their inventory manager, sample manager, and other Labsheets to aid their daily research.
Scispot also made their data capturing easier and more efficient, helping them to plan and curate complex workflows in a more structured way.
"I’ve started relying on Scispot for my daily research planning and execution. Using it to design my experiment templates and store all of my result data has been a game-changer." Gricelda Mendiola, Scientist, Micro Meat
