Eating a hamburger made from meat grown in a lab may sound like a futuristic concept, but the research and development of this cutting-edge food technology is happening today — right in our own backyard.
Matrix Food Technologies, a startup in the city of Dublin, creates products used by companies that produce what’s becoming commonly known as “cultured meat” or “cultivated meat.” The process creates real food products grown from animal cells in a lab, without bringing any harm or inhumane treatment to actual animals.
By the year 2030, cultivated meat is projected to be a $25 billion dollar global industry, according to research by consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Matrix Food Technologies CEO Eric Jenkusky was first introduced to the industry in 2019, and co-founded the startup in August 2019.
“We have customers that are growing beef, chicken, pork, fish, lobster, shrimp and even milk,” said Jenkusky. “It’s all real meat, and it’s not genetically modified.”
“At Matrix Food Technologies, we design and manufacture three-dimensional nano-fiber scaffolds and microcarriers that our customers utilize to grow and differentiate meat cells,” he said.
What are nano-fiber scaffolds?
“Nano-fiber scaffolds” are microscopic polymer materials that have traditionally been used in medical processes to regrow skin tissue, bone, and organ tissue for humans. The technology is now being adapted for food production, with the goal of bringing a more sustainable meat creation process to the mass market.
“By 2030, cultivated meat could provide as much as a half of one percent — billions of pounds — of the world’s meat supply, with implications for multiple sectors,” states the McKinsey report. “Currently, the world primarily eats the meat of animals that are the easiest to farm industrially, but cultivated meat won’t face those constraints. Instead, the industry could select cell lines from specific animals with the best traits, such as Wagyu beef or wild salmon, and replicate them at the same cost as, say, beef patties or tilapia.”
The technology being developed at Matrix can also produce meat faster than traditional methods — typically taking just four to 10 weeks to make.
“You need the cells of a particular animal or fish that you would like to grow in a bioreactor – my term for a petri dish,” explained Jenkusky. “Then you need a growth factor, which is the ‘food’ for the cells, and a scaffold if you want to have a structured piece of meat.”
In the early phases of developing the business, Jenkusky and his team at Matrix reached out to potential customers and venture capital investors and found support from New York-based Unovis Asset Management. The startup was spun out of lkove Startup Nursery due to a joint venture between lkove and Nanofiber Solutions. NanoFiber Solutions is an existing Dublin-based business that was working with the same types of technology for medical uses.
While nearly 100 companies around the world are working on developing cultivated meat products today, none have reached commercial-level production as of yet.
“There’s about 80 companies globally that are attempting to grow meat,” said Jenkusky. “We have spoken to about 50 of them and 28 of them have our product that they’re using to help develop their product.”
The idea behind lab-grown meat is not a new one. Famously, Winston Churchill predicted in 1931 that “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” Nearly 100 years later, we’ve arrived at the cusp of that reality.
“And the future of protein is being developed right here in Central Ohio,” said Jenkusky.
For more information, visit matrixfood.tech.
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