Multus launches new ingredient to cut the cost of cultivated meat

Multus has launched a new product, rh-Vitronectin to accelerate cell growth and proliferation in cultivated meat. Vitronectin is a protein present naturally in animals. Using vitronectin to make cultivated meat therefore significantly increases the rate of production.

So, what’s different about Multus’ newly launched rh-Vitronectin? It promotes increased cell growth: Multus’ vitronectin boosts cell growth by up to 55% after only two days in tests growing fibroblast cells. It is also ideal for food-safe manufacturing: Multus makes the vitronectin product at its facility, which has ISO22000 certified food safe manufacturing. And importantly for cultivated meat, it comes at a lower price. Multus is tackling the cultivated meat price gap by launching vitronectin at a significantly lower price point and targeting the cultivated meat sector to use at scale.

The launch of rh-Vitronectin is a significant step forward in the quest to make cultivated meat a viable and affordable alternative to traditional meat production. As Multus CEO Cai Linton noted, "Multus’ rh-Vitronectin is uniquely designed for the cultivated meat industry and has the potential to unlock the affordable scale-up of cultivated meat production and shorten routes to market.”

This game-changing product launch is the latest in a series of announcements from Multus which include: raising US$$9.5 million of investment to build a world-first production facility for cultivated meat ingredients; winning Europe’s most competitive startup grant on the EIC accelerator; achieving an ISO 22000 certification for food safe manufacturing; and launching Proliferum M, the serum-free growth media for cultivated meat, designed for large-scale industrial use.

Despite cultivated meat companies raising a record US$603.7 million in venture funding in 2022 (PitchBook), the cost, ethics and food-safety of key ingredients are a major barrier to the sector being an affordable alternative. In terms of the former, to achieve competitive pricing, today’s cultivated meat suppliers need to reach a 100 x decrease in price. This is highly unlikely without lowering the price of key ingredients which make up the majority of the cost. For example, growth media alone makes up 55-95% of cultivated meat product cost (Good Food Institute 2022).

In terms of ethics and scalability, Foetal Bovine Serum (FBS) has previously been used in cultivated meat as a growth media. However, it is unethically sourced and experiences large price and performance fluctuations. By contrast, many serum-free formulations are expensive and do not perform well across the range of cell lines used in cultivated meat.

Multus is a team of scientists and engineers tackling these scaling challenges by developing ingredients specifically created for affordable, scalable cultivated meat.

The company's growth media ingredients and formulations are the building blocks of cellular agriculture and enable the affordable at-scale production of real animal products,  including meat, dairy, leather, and more – using cells instead of animals.

Multus is at the forefront of the sustainable protein transition, pioneering the design and production of key ingredients. Its unique approach enables a genuinely sustainable alternative to intensive animal farming, which continues to erode biodiversity, monopolize arable land, and emit high levels of greenhouse gases.