South African Startup Scales Up Growth Factor for Low-Cost Cultivated Meat

South Africa’s Immobazyme has successfully scaled production of a critical growth factor to lower the cost of cultivated meat, in collaboration with a government-owned research organisation.

In a breakthrough for the domestic alternative protein sector, South Africa’s Immobazyme has successfully produced a growth factor for cultivated meat at a large scale.

The Stellenbosch-based startup has been working with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an entity of the federal government’s Department of Science and Innovation.

Together, they have scaled production of fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF-2) for cultivated meat in a 50-litre bioreactor, a first for the country.

“It is a huge achievement for the CSIR, and this opens doors to other novel and unique technologies to localise, particularly fibroblast growth factors and others such as insulin growth factors,” said Veshara Ramdas, a biotechnology expert at the CSIR.

How Immobazyme and CSIR developed their growth factor

“Companies specialising in cell-cultivated meat take a cell from a cow, or a fish, or a chicken. They take it to the laboratory and then they make that one cell become many cells, and eventually, those many cells become a food product,” said Immobazyme co-founder and chief commercial officer Nick Enslin.

The startup approached CSIR with a genetically modified bacterial strain for the production of FGF-2, a commercial protein that signals mammalian cells to multiply and proliferate. Growth factors are added to the mix to guide and sustain meat growth.

While they’re essential for producing cultivated meat, they are traditionally very expensive and account for the bulk of culture media costs.

Ramdas explained that her team envisioned an excellent business case to scale up Immobazyme’s production process at the CSIR Biomanufacturing Industry Development Centre (BIDC). Its task was to create a cost-effective, efficient process using precision microbiology and bioreactors.

The organisation’s scientists established sterile and stable conditions to ensure that only Immobazyme’s genetically modified E coli is growing in the bacterial culture, alongside the target protein. The culture starts in a petri dish, grows in a flask with ideal nutrients, and is then transferred to bioreactors with precisely controlled parameters, such as temperature and nutrient levels.

“When we harvest the bioreactor, that whole broth then goes through a separation process,” said Ramdas. The liquid component is separated from the E. coli biomass, and the FGF-2 protein is then extracted and purified.

“Our product is based intracellularly, so we have to pop those cells open or break them open, in a process of mechanical disruption,” she said.

The broken E. coli are then removed from the mixture by centrifugation, which forces the heavier cell material to sink to the bottom while the target protein remains in a clear liquid at the top. This clarified lysate is then purified, yielding a pure FGF-2 protein powder ready for cell culture in the cultivated meat industry.

Immobazyme plans to scale up further at CSIR facility

The scale-up process was backed by funding from the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation and the Technology Innovation Agency, as part of the Biomanufacturing Industry Development Programme.

According to Enslin, the industrial insight and training gained through the collaboration with CSIR are invaluable for the business. “The BIDC is an incredible facility; it is a world-class facility,” he said.

“But I would almost say beyond the facility itself, the equipment and the machinery, there was this flow of ideas; it was a collaborative effort,” he added.

The startup is now hoping to scale up FGF-2 manufacturing, alongside other proteins and products in its pipeline. It will continue using the large facilities at CSIR to boost its production.

“At the end of the day, we got [a] commercially viable product through this relationship, which is really cool to see,” said Enslin.

“The fact that Immobazyme took a unique and new construct that they had developed and produced this FGF-2 in a cost-effective manner puts them in a competitive position compared to what is available internationally,” noted Ramdas.

Cultivated meat is a fledgling industry in South Africa, home to only a handful of startups, such as Newform Foods and WildBio. They operate in a continent whose population is expected to nearly double to 2.5 billion by 2050, coinciding with a rise in demand for meat.

With food security a major risk for many countries in the region, cultivated meat could help meet that demand locally and with fewer risks.