The Good Food Institute, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs, as well as cultivated meat, has entered two separate partnerships to advance research in cellular aquaculture.
GFI recently partnered with Kerafast, a reagents company that provides difficult-to-access bioresearch materials to the global scientific community, with the goal of creating a cell line repository that includes lines from seafood-relevant species. The partnership will be channeled through the Sustainable Seafood Initiative, which was founded by GFI in early 2019 with the specific goal of developing and commercializing plant-based and cell-based seafood.
A memorandum of understanding between GFI and Kerafast will establish a cell line repository managed by Kerafast, which will include characterization and quality control data for each line and a straightforward ordering system, making it easier for researchers to access cell lines.
“The Kerafast mission is to advance scientific research by facilitating access to unique lab-made research tools, and we’re eager to support the scientists who are developing sustainable seafood by making related cell lines more readily available worldwide,” said Amelia Gibson, senior director of product licensing at Kerafast.
Companies and researchers making or working with aquatic cell lines can deposit it with Kerafast and view available lines online, according to GFI Senior Scientist Claire Bomkamp, writing in a recent blog post.
“We encourage all researchers who would like to share lines from both seafood and terrestrial meat species to contribute them to the Kerafast repository,” Bomkamp said. “We also plan to link the cell line repository with other SSI resources, including a forthcoming 'seafood atlas' containing detailed structural and cellular-level characterization of conventional seafood products.”
In her post, Bomkamp laid out GFI efforts to move research forward and grow the sector. A growing number of start-ups are looking into the possibilities of cell-based technology to meet consumer demand for seafood, and more and more academic researchers and private companies are working to cultivate meat directly from cells, rather than from whole animals, Bomkamp noted.
“Lack of access to cell lines is a significant barrier to research progress. Researchers wanting to study everything from media composition to scaffolding to bioreactor design have to first either find a source of cells or create their own line. This takes time and resources,” Bomkamp said. “By developing easily accessible cell lines for the research community, we will allow researchers to use their limited time and resources solving more challenging and interesting downstream problems.”
GFI has also awarded a grant to Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, to create cell lines from redfish (Sciaenops ocellatus) and whiteleg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) embryos.
“Current model species have limited direct relevance to seafood. Because there is also a solid foundation of research into redfish biology, including cell culture studies, Mote chose this species to establish it as a ‘model food species,’” Bomkamp said. “Shrimp is an obvious and incredibly impactful choice, given that it’s a very popular food with some pretty dismal environmental impacts.”
With American consumers continuing to have no strong established preference for farmed or wild fish, according to a new study by Changing Tastes, and cellular-based seafood companies like BlueNalu making the case for the taste of lab-grown seafood with culinary demonstrations focused on its cell-based yellowtail amberjack, seafood created using this method could make a splash in the market relatively quickly.
“Even if we were able to increase supply to meet this demand, both wild-caught and farmed seafood pose additional challenges,” Bomkamp said. “Although there are producers making strides when it comes to sustainability, these players represent only a portion of the seafood supplied around the world. Better alternatives are desperately needed to supplement current production methods and to replace the more harmful ones.”
Image courtesy of The Good Food Institute
