The Future Is Here: Lab-Grown Steak

Israeli startup Aleph Farms with ties to an Israeli research institute and an incubator that's part of the food giant that owns Sabra — the most popular hummus in America — announced that it had produced the world's first lab-grown steak.

If there were a holy grail in the world of real meat made without farm animals, it would be steak. While many companies make plant-based burgers, a handful of startups are trying to make real, environmentally friendly beef and chicken from animal cells — bypassing the farm animals.

Other companies were able to produce prototypes of lab-grown burger, sausage, chicken nuggets, and chicken strips, but none has achieved the goal of replicating the texture, shape, and mouthfeel of savory, chewy sirloin.

That's because crafting a burger, meatball, or any other product that combines several ingredients with ground meat or seafood is much easier than mimicking the complex texture and flavor of a steak or a chicken breast.

Rather than spending time trying to create meatballs or nuggets, Aleph headed straight for the goal of a steak. That's a goal the company has had since the outset and one it may be uniquely poised to tackle thanks to its foundations in regenerative medicine.

Aleph was cofounded by the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and an incubator called The Kitchen, which is part of Strauss Group. Strauss owns Sabra hummus and distributes Cheetos and Doritos in Israel as part of an agreement with Pepsi.

Shulamit Levenberg, the dean of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology's biomedical engineering faculty, serves as Aleph's chief scientific officer, and Neta Lavon, an experienced stem-cell researcher who developed cell-therapy products from stem cells for diabetes and the neurodegenerative disease ALS, serves as Aleph's vice president of research and development.

Instead of growing only one or two types of animal cells on a flat surface, Aleph grows four types of animal cells in three dimensions. While other companies grow animal cells using fetal bovine serum (FBS), a standard and relatively inexpensive lab medium made from the blood of pregnant slaughtered cows, Aleph is growing them in a medium that is free of FBS.

Each of the thinly-sliced steaks made as part of Aleph's prototype took 2-3 weeks to produce and cost $50. Back in 2013, when Dutch scientist Mark Post became the first person in the world to make a beef burger from cow cells, the patty cost $330,000.

Source: Business Insider