New Strategic Partnership Aims to Rejuvenate Cell Media to Reduce Costs of Cultivated Meat

A recently announced joint development agreement (JDA) between UK bioprocessing company CellRev and Saint-Gobain Life Sciences (SGLS), a global leader in fluid management solutions, aims to create the “industry-first” cell media rejuvenation process for cellular product developers and manufacturers.

Through the JDA, the companies will use their expertise to design and develop a “game-changing” solution to recycle cell media to reduce waste, thus reducing the costs of cultivating meat or any other cell-based product.

Cell culture media is an unavoidable but expensive component of the cell culture process. As the cultivated meat field scales, reducing its cost and waste will be crucial to producing products at lower prices. UPSIDE Foods’ recently launched cell-cultivated chicken at Bar Crenn costs $150 for a six-course meal. 

Narendar Yeshwanth, VP of R&D and Innovation at Saint-Gobain Life Sciences, comments: “We expect to develop cost-saving solutions that reduce the high-cost media used in bioprocessing today. Our collaboration with the CellRev team will help deliver a sustainable solution that will impact multiple markets.”

Combining expertise for sustainable solutions

According to the announcement, CellRev will assist in developing a process to remove toxins and metabolites — replenishing the cell media to recirculate it as much as possible. SGLS will create, establish, and manufacture the components for the fluid system that will pump and recirculate the recycled cell media into the cultivating platform.

CellRev says that the cell media rejuvenating process will complement its revolutionary continuous cell processing platform, which enables further reduction of costs. CellRev’s continuous platform can continuously grow, detach, and collect adherent cells. It offers a seamless process from research to market with superior automation, control, and stability versus existing technologies, explains the company.

The project contemplates several stages of development before commercialization, but the companies said they expect to have a finished product in 2024.

Chris Green, CEO at CellRev, said: “CellRev is focused orevolutionizingng cell cultivation, making it more sustainablwhilest bringing down the cost and reducing waste in the process. Our breakthrough continuous cell processing platform is already addressing the bioprocessing need, and through this JDA with SGLS, we can begin to tackle media waste to further reduce product cost.” 

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