Rehovot, Israel-based cell-cultured seafood producer Forsea said it has achieved a major step toward making cell-cultured eel commercially viable.
Using the startup’s organoid technology, Forsea said it recently achieved the highest cell density recorded in the cell-cultured seafood field.
"This is a major milestone for Forsea and validates our vision of making sustainable, high-quality seafood affordable and widely accessible," Forsea Founder and CEO Roee Nir said. "It also sets a powerful precedent for scaling other cultured seafood products and establishing sustainable alternative supply chains for ecologically sensitive species."
Forsea CTO Morio Shimoni echoed that sentiment, saying that “the breakthrough to this level of cell density highlights the strength of our organoid technology."
"It's a validation of our approach to high-efficiency cultivation of seafood to meet both economic and sustainability goals at scale," Shimoni said.
Organoid technology is a patented platform which allows cells to differentiate and grow autonomously, as they do in nature. In general, cell-cultured seafood uses stem cells that are directed toward specific target tissues like muscle or fat. By contrast, Forsea creates organoids from stem cells that grow and differentiate into edible cells independently.
“By harnessing nature’s tissue formation methods, we enable natural cell differentiation and growth," the company said.
This approach allows the cultivated cells to “spontaneously assemble into 3D tissue structures with their natural composition of fat, muscle, and connective tissue,” according to the company, which further explained that the method is far less costly than traditional cell culturation, which requires expensive growth factors.
For Forsea, this means that cell-grown eel can be produced at price parity, or even below, what aquafarmed eel has traditionally cost.
The company says its proprietary technology will allow it to cost-effectively scale production of the Japanese delicacy unagi, which has been overfished in recent years. Japan is the world’s largest consumer of eel, which is considered a premium delicacy in the nation, prized for its flavor and rarity. In 2023, Japanese sales of eel, amounting to 140,000 metric tons, made up 50 percent of the world’s total sales.
Freshwater eel is endangered and cannot be commercially bred; Forsea says that its cultured eel can mitigate the sky-rocketing prices caused by high Japanese demand.
Nir said that the company is now ready for commercial production, thanks to the fact that “organoid technology requires less capital expenditure than other technologies.” It expects to begin commercial production in 2026.
