Welcome to Pluripotent — it’s Friday, July 17th, and this is a special edition of the newsletter because there was some fun breaking news. As ever, news tips can be patched through to me via direct message, also feel free to follow me over at @chasepurdy.
NEW YORK — Bust out the vodka, Russia just emerged as one of the top global markets that could be the first to embrace cell-cultured meat.
A blockbuster partnership between KFC and Moscow-based 3D Bioprinting Solutions was announced overnight, a union that is aiming to develop a hybrid plant-based and cell-cultured chicken nugget product for high-level testing within the next several months.
“3D Bioprinting Solutions is developing additive bioprinting technology using chicken cells and plant material, allowing it to reproduce the taste and texture of chicken meat,” the release states. “KFC will provide its partner with all of the necessary ingredients, such as breading and spices, to achieve the signature KFC taste.”
For anyone in this nascent industry curious about whether they’ll be seeing a hybrid nugget on the Russian market by the end of the year, you can rest easy. Andrei Rukavishnikov, who heads up marketing at the startup, says consumers will likely not be eating this for another two or three years.
“For sure it won't be on the KFC menu next year,” Rukavishnikov says. “By the end of the year we hope to have proof of product.”
The news is still huge for the cellular agriculture space. Having Yum! Brands-owned KFC lined up and ready to experiment with an early cultured meat product lays the groundwork for getting hybrid nuggets to a lot of people, and through a multinational company with a tremendous amount of brand recognition and marketing power.
“I think the future is starting now,” Rukavishnikov says. “After the plant stuff we'll see hybrids, and after that you'll see pure [cultured] meat."
It’s already hit US shores
3D Bioprinting Solutions may be headquartered in Moscow, but it’s owned by a US company called VivaxBio, which is registered in Delaware and based in New York City. VivaxBio has already set up a New York-based subsidiary called Meal Source Technologies. This satellite company will be focused entirely on the food technology and introducing cutting-edge bioprinting food work to US partners. The subsidiary is being run by Yakov Balakhovsky, who says propriety equipment is currently being transferred from Moscow to the US lab.
“Some people just use bioreactors to grow their cell base,” Balakhovsky says. “We want to introduce 3D bioprinting. It may be valuable in terms of scaling up production, accomplishing shaping, and the organizing of cells in the future.”
He says that Meal Source Technologies is currently expanding the size of its team, and expects within the next two months to announce a new chief technical officer who will be instrumental for forging US partnerships. The New York-based lab will work in parallel with the team in Russia, but being in the US gives the company closer access to North American consumer and financial markets, Balakhovsky says.
Behind the curtain
For people with years of experience working in cellular agriculture, the name of one person on the team at 3D Bioprinting Solutions will ring a bell. Dr. Vladimir A. Mironov is listed as the company's head of research.
An early pioneer of cultured meat research, Mironov was one of the first board members at New Harvest and has a long research background in embryology, cell biology, and tissue biofabrication. In 2000 he became affiliated with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), which he left eleven years later over a disagreement about how federal funding was being used by his lab.
At 3D Bioprinting Solutions he has applied his skills to push the printing of cultured meat to new heights. In October 2019, in partnership with Bay Area-based Finless Foods and Israel-based Aleph Farms, Mironov’s work at 3D Bioprinting was launched into space and delivered to the International Space Station, where cosmonauts printed the first sample of cultured meat far above Earth’s atmosphere. That work was recently highlighted in Forbes magazine.
As Rukavishnikov explained, there’s still a long way to go before his company could print cultured meat in a cost-effective way, but its getting closer and closer every week. The company has shared a video on YouTube of its squid meat.
The company has already used the technology in a medical setting, printing a tiny thyroid gland that was successfully transplanted into living mice. Printing meat is an adjacent technology. Rukavishnikov says his company is able to print a conglomerate of thousands of cells — micro tissue — that fuse together to make macro tissue. For its hybrid nuggets, the company prints in dozens of layers of plant- and cultured-meat to form a larger piece of meat.
Right now, most 3D printing of food is only applied to chocolate, fancy pastas, and pastries. 3D Bioprinting Solutions hopes to change that.
“No food printer can yet print a real piece of meat, or steak, or nugget,” Rukavishnikov says, adding that a kilo of some animals cells for printing can cost up to $12,000. “So the whole idea is we want to make a breakthrough.”
He says bioprinters can't roast yet, so the final step will involve bringing a semi-finished product to KFC’s food technologists to figure out the roasting how to apply its own signature seasonings to the nuggets in the chain’s own test kitchens.
Shocking the industry
Reaction within the cultured meat industry to news about 3D Bioprinting Solutions has been a mix of shock and curiosity. When asked what they knew about the Russian company, a handful of startup CEOs said they were taken by surprise.
“First time I’m hearing of 3D Bioprinting Solutions, are they new?” one said.
Another person in the field said: “My apocalyptic 2020 bingo board did not have this on it, that’s for sure.”
At the Washington DC-based Good Food Institute, the reaction was decidedly upbeat. The organization’s executive director, Bruce Friedrich, said he doesn’t know much about the Moscow-based company, but added that it’s “very exciting news, totally game-changing…which is something I don’t say lightly.”
An extra morsel…
For anyone in cultured meat who’s fretted over what to call it, 3D Bioprinting Solutions has its own idea of what the name should be. In fact, in its early conversations with KFC, they used — and continue to use — the term “craft meat.”
“I am a marketing person and I also came from the beer industry and it has good connotations,” Rukavishnikov says. “Craft for us is a piece of art. I like how it sounds. For me, craft meat is the best name. I'm not sure if it will be the final name. But we use in our lab.”
And the debate rages on…