As cultivated meat corporations push past proof-of-concept and towards commercialization, a number of the sector’s most cussed challenges – price, scalability, texture and manufacturing – are being addressed not via new animal cell breakthroughs, however via crops.
From cell tradition media to structural scaffolding, a rising cohort of startups is reframing plant-based supplies not as competing options to cultivated meat, however as purposeful enablers that assist the trade transfer from lab-scale experimentation to viable manufacturing.
“The conclusion that we’ve had for many of 2025 really was tech is now not the impediment,” stated Suzi Gerber, government director of the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS). “The tech is there, the improvements that will get you there are there. What stays is to construct it.”
Two corporations – Deco Labs and TrueMeat – provide a window into what that constructing section now appears like.
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Tackling media prices with plant-derived proteins
For Deco Labs, the problem was clear early on: cell tradition media stays one of many largest price boundaries to cultivated meat reaching worth parity.
After successful the pitch competitors throughout Future Meals-Tech final yr for its plant-based albumin various, Deco Labs’ Co-Founder Natalie Rubio realized that the ingredient “actually does remedy a ache level for the trade and allows price discount,” she stated.
Albumin is a key protein present in animal blood and is a essential element within the creation of serum-free development media to interchange the pricey fetal bovine serum (FBS). Whereas albumin is cheaper than FBS, its excessive price nonetheless stays a hurdle for cell-cultured formulations.
Deco Labs developed a plant-derived, food-grade various to albumin, defined Rubio. The ingredient is produced from canola meal – a low-cost byproduct of canola oil manufacturing (canola meal) – and is designed to operate as a drop-in alternative.
Whereas canola meal has traditionally been used for animal feed, Deco Labs upcycles the fabric to isolate a purposeful protein “that’s capable of operate rather well in cell tradition,” she stated.
The corporate’s method is rooted in unit economics. Canola meal is ample, cheap and globally out there, and the processing strategies mirror established protein isolate manufacturing already used at scale within the meals trade.
“Our manufacturing course of appears fairly much like soy protein isolate manufacturing,” Rubio stated. “So the entire unit operations are fairly easy and have been confirmed to scale to very giant capability.”
Deco Labs is concentrating on a dramatic price discount.
“We purpose to be a thousand instances cheaper at scale,” Rubio stated, including that plant-derived inputs may face fewer regulatory hurdles than recombinant proteins already in use. “I believe that substances that come from crops, which can be already current within the meals system, are going to have a neater time with regulatory acceptance.”
That trajectory displays a broader trade shift. “We’ve had breakthroughs in media element growth… most notably, meals grade media,” Gerber famous.
Utilizing crops to unravel the feel downside
Whereas Deco Labs focuses on what cells develop in, TrueMeat, a mobile ag startup, is concentrated on what cultivated meat is constructed on.
The early-stage Tufts College spinout is creating whole-cut meat merchandise utilizing plant-based supplies as structural scaffolding, with animal cells included later for taste and organic constancy, defined TrueMeat Co-founder Rickey Kallicharan.
The startup is in its early phases the place it solely “simply established complicated scaffolding, and we try to get to the purpose the place we’ve a plant-based, forkable prototype,” he defined.
TrueMeat’s technique begins with soy, not as a completed product, however as a purposeful constructing materials to develop complete cuts of meat.
“We take into consideration the crops because the constructing materials, relatively than the top product,” Kallicharan stated. “We targeted on soy as a result of it’s some of the properly understood purposeful and scalable plant proteins.”
That familiarity issues when the aim is replicating the “construction and texture that behave extra like meat,” because of a “robust elastic community,” he defined.
The corporate has additionally developed proprietary gear to assist the scaffolding manufacturing, with a transparent eye towards commercialization timelines – a precedence for traders in at the moment’s funding atmosphere.
“That’s essential to traders proper now,” Kallicharan stated. “How shortly are you able to get to the primary greenback.”
From innovation to execution
Regardless of completely different technical approaches, Deco Labs and TrueMeat share a typical philosophy: plant-based supplies will not be a detour from cultivated meat’s promise, however a option to make it actual and doubtlessly price efficient to supply.
For TrueMeat, success finally comes all the way down to client expertise. “I believe adoption will actually be pushed by merchandise that merely eat properly,” Kallicharan stated. “It suits naturally into meals, and customers don’t should compromise.”
And for the sector as a complete, the shift towards plant-derived inputs and hybrid methods alerts a maturation second – one the place the main target is much less on whether or not cultivated meat can work, and extra on how one can construct it effectively, affordably and at scale.
Editor’s Word: This text has been up to date to right the spelling of TrueMeat, which was beforehand misspelled as TruMeat.
