Growth factor-based cell production ‘TME Therapeutics’ selected for TIPS
Reading Time: 2 minutesTME Therapeutics, a developer of growth factor-based cell production and control technology, announced that it has been selected for TIPS, South Korea’s technology startup support program. The company raised funding from BigBang Angels last year.
TME Therapeutics has developed growth factor stabilization and delivery technology, which is an essential material for stem cell production, and is first applying it to cultured meat production. It is used to develop cell therapies due to the high cost of using bio-derived stem cells to multiply cells in an external environment.
Since it is not feasible to apply expensive biological cells to cultured meat to replace existing meat, research on biomimetics that can reduce growth factors is actively underway. TME Therapeutics is developing a core technology that improves the stability of growth factors essential for cell growth with biomimetics, thereby reducing the amount of growth factors required to obtain cultured meat at an affordable price.
TME Therapeutics has been in talks with Israeli cultured meat producers, who are leading the global cultured meat industry, since last year for technology transfer and joint business with the goal of significantly reducing the cost of cultured meat production by applying growth factor control technology to their production processes.
“Through the TIPS program, we are focusing on establishing an economical stem cell multiplication process to reduce the cost of cultured meat production to about $60 per kilogram, which is half of the current cost, and aim to achieve commercial-scale production with Israeli cultured meat producers in 2025,” said Lee Sang-jae, CEO of TM Therapeutics.
“Among the many domestic and foreign startups with cultured meat technology, the growth factor stabilization technology developed by TME Therapeutics can be provided to all companies as a source technology or collaborated with. In addition, if the technology is applied to food companies that can produce cultured meat, it can reduce the cost of cultured meat and accelerate the commercialization of cultured meat” said Taehyun Kim, CEO of Bigbang Angels.
Meanwhile, TME Therapeutics plans to establish a collaboration model with the province of Alberta, Canada, famous for its Alberta Beef brand, to jointly develop a beef cultured meat business and establish a local cultured meat production system.
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