Business Concentrates GLOBAL HEALTH
New effort to develop meatless meat UC Berkeley, Givaudan partner to make meat alternatives tastier A new lab at the University of California, Berkeley, aims to develop plant-based meat alternatives appealing enough to make meat lovers abandon their favorite steak. The university says it will make its innovations available for free to encourage more entrepreneurs to enter the market.
Students at the University of California, Berkeley, taste their plant-based fish alternative.
The lab will be part of Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. Ikhlaq Sidhu, the center’s founder, says meat alternatives are a big opportunity for start-ups. Animal-free meat is also attracting investors. Last week, Bay-area-based Memphis Meats raised $17 million from investors including Cargill and Bill Gates. The company makes a variety of meats from
animal cells raised in a bioreactor. Berkeley jumped on the plant-based meat trend earlier this year, when it launched what it calls the world’s first course focused on the topic. Now 40 students will have the opportunity to solve both technical and business dilemmas facing the nascent industry. The team includes chemical engineering, liberal arts, science, and business students. To improve the taste, texture, and smell of current offerings, the lab will work with the Swiss flavors and fragrances maker Givaudan. The company hopes the students can create an easy-to-manufacture product with intracellular fats and water that mimics the umami flavor of meat. “We must collaborate to truly move forward,” says Flavio Garofalo, Givaudan’s business manager for protein. Market research firm Mintel says buyers of meat alternatives want products made with natural ingredients—a potential challenge for lab-based businesses. One leading contender, Impossible Foods, adds soy leghemoglobin to its plant-based hamburger. It produces the bloodlike protein from genetically modified yeast. Earlier this month, Impossible Foods said it is responding to a request by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for more information to support the company’s determination that soy leghemoglobin is generally recognized as safe, or GRAS.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
BY THE NUMBERS
400 Sources: Start-Up Nation Central, AgFunder
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | AUGUST 28, 2017
The number of Israeli start-ups developing agricultural technologies. The companies are spread across 12 categories, including water management, biotechnology, crop protection, and robotics. Last year the tiny nation claimed 2% of global agtech venture investments, or $52 million.
Novartis advances new malaria drug Novartis and the nonprofit Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have launched patient testing of an antimalarial compound they claim has the potential to treat drug-resistant strains of the malaria parasite. The compound, KAF156, will be tested for efficacy in combination with a new formulation of the existing antimalarial lumefantrine. The first test is being performed at a center in Mali. The partners plan to follow it with tests at 16 other centers in nine countries in Africa and Asia this year. KAF156 belongs to a class of antimalarial compounds called imidazolopiperazines. The compound has proved fast acting in Phase IIa clinical trials in clearing both Plasmodium faliciparum and P. vivax parasites, Novartis says.
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NH F KAF156 The push for new antimalarial drugs is in response to recent reports of parasite strains resistant to standard regimens for battling malaria, such as combinations of artemisinin with mefloquine or piperaquine. Moreover, these drugs must be taken once or twice daily over three days, often leading to incomplete courses of treatment. The long-term goal of MMV is the development of single-dose combination therapies. KAF156 was discovered and developed in a partnership between two Novartis research arms and the Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute with support from MMV, the Wellcome Trust, and Singapore Economic Development Board.—RICK
MULLIN
C R E D I T: UN I V E RS I TY O F CA L I FO R N I A , B ER K E LE Y
CONSUMER PRODUCTS
