From San Diego-based Debut Biotech, which is developing a range of high-value ingredients via a novel ‘cell-free’ biomanufacturing platform, to Virginia-based Bonumose, which has patented technology it claims could enable the “mass market adoption” of rare sugars, check out our gallery of food ingredients startups to watch …
Bonumose – a Virginia-based startup with patented technology it claims could enable the mass market adoption of rare sugars – recently raised a Series B round led by Hershey and sugar refining giant ASR Group, to support commercial production of allulose and tagatose next year. (Pic: GettyImages-CherriesJD)
Right now, firms manufacturing allulose on a commercial scale deploy a multi-step process that takes them from corn starch to maltodextrin, to glucose, to fructose, which is then converted into allulose using enzymes, a “low-yield process with multiple separation and purification steps.”
Bonumose also starts with starch, but has enzymes that can convert the maltodextrin directly to allulose, with a very high yield, a potential game-changer in the market, says co-founder and CEO Ed Rogers.
“Our process for tagatose also starts with starch and then maltodextrin and we can go straight to tagatose. At a very large scale, we could probably make it even more efficiently than high fructose corn syrup.”
San Diego-based Debut Biotech – co-founded in 2019 - has built a novel ‘cell-free’ biomanufacturing platform, which it claims could unlock opportunities to biosynthesize a far wider set of natural ingredients, from colors to preservatives and antioxidants, says co-founder and CEO Dr Joshua Britton. (Pic: GettyImages-sabelskaya.)
Right now, says Britton, who has recently struck partnerships with DIC (colors) and DSM (multiple ingredients), you can extract natural ingredients from plants, which can be expensive, inefficient, and not always very sustainable; or you can produce them via microbial fermentation, which can’t produce everything the food industry wants.
At Debut Bio, by contrast, Britton is taking some of the machinery of cells (custom-designed enzymes, nature’s tiny biological catalysts) and immobilizing them (essentially fixing them in place) such that they can convert low-value materials such as glucose into high-value ingredients, in a continuous process.
This allows Debut Bio – a UC Irvine spin-off - to operate across a wider range of conditions (pH, temperature) and allows for metabolic transformations that are not possible in cellular [microbial fermentation] systems, claims Britton.
Comet Bio - which is based in Canada and has a US headquarters in Chicago - is developing functional fibers and sweeteners from upcycled feedstocks from corn stover and brewer’s spent grains to wheat straw, soybean hulls and other crop leftovers. (Pic: GettyImages-dusipuffi)
Its ‘Arrabina’ arabinoxylan – a fiber found in the cell walls of several plants that CEO Rich Troyer refers to as ‘the Cadillac of fibers’ – has a range of benefits from prebiotic effects to blood glucose control and immune health support. But no one has found a cost-effective way to isolate and produce it on an industrial scale… until now, he says.
The firm's Sweeterra 95DE syrup, meanwhile, is "ideal for fermentations of all kinds, including precision fermentation and cultured protein,” says Troyer, who has just closed a $22m Series C round.
“Cultured meat could be a very significant market for 95DE for example as that technology scales up.”
Terviva – a California-based firm commercializing ingredients from low-input, high-yielding Pongamia trees – aims to have commercial quantities of 'golden buttery' oil available by mid-2022, with ‘highly soluble’ protein isolates to follow in 2023. (Pic credit: Terviva.)
The company, which recently teamed up with Danone to "introduce Pongamia oil and plant protein to a broad range of food and beverage applications,” has developed proprietary techniques that remove anti-nutritional components during processing, opening up new food and beverage market opportunities for the “incredibly robust” nitrogen-fixing crop.
The mid-oleic oil – which is semi-solid in the fridge – has a golden color and buttery flavor with nutty notes, with potential in a range of applications from culinary oils to salad dressings, mayo, and plant-based meat products.
The protein isolates are garnering interest because of their neutral taste, attractive PDCAAS score (.85) vs some other plant proteins, and high solubility, says the firm.
Structured ‘super-expanding’ natural fibers that can capture fats and sugars in the stomach and prevent their absorption in the small intestine could help reduce calorie intakes and deliver digestive health benefits, claims San Francisco-based BioLumen, one of 10 startups selected by PepsiCo to participate in the fifth cohort of its Greenhouse Accelerator program. (Pic credit: BioLumen)
Co-founded by serial entrepreneur Paolo Costa, and Dr Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist and author of popular science books such as ‘Fat Chance: Beating the Odds against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease,’ BioLumen has engineered an ingredient combining natural polysaccharides that captures sugars and fats in the stomach.
These sugar and fats ‘micro-jelly-balls’ then navigate unabsorbed through the small intestine – where fats and sugars are usually digested and utilized by the body – and arrive in the large intestine.
Part of these encapsulated sugars and fats are then “released inside the colon, feeding the microbiome and increasing the bacterial production of beneficial short-chain fatty acids (a prebiotic function), while the rest of the unabsorbed trapped nutrients are naturally excreted (a caloric elimination function),” claims Costa.
“Of course BioLumen does not succeed to absorb all the sugars,” he says. “We are talking here in percentages. BioLumen is going to just decrease the percentage of sugars absorbed. Right now, 1g of BioLumen seems to be able to eliminate 5g of sugar. It means that 6 g of BioLumen per day would eliminate 30g of sugar daily. That would be already a quarter of US average daily sugar ingestion. That alone would reduce the average US person body weight by 15lbs per year."
When it comes to meat alternatives, fat remains the final frontier for formulators, says Canberra-based Nourish Ingredients, which is harnessing the power of microbes to produce next-generation ‘animal-free’ fats it claims can deliver a ‘meatier’ experience than plant-based oils. (Pic credit: Nourish Ingredients.)
“We can produce mimics [animal- or animal-like fats, without animals], but the more exciting frontier is building new fats, fats that have not yet been built or have not been cultivated in high enough quantities to be useful.”
It’s early days for the startup, which has just raised $11m in a funding round co-led by Horizons Ventures and Main Sequence Ventures. But the plan is to “produce both meat and dairy fats,” says co-founder Dr James Petrie, who worked as a research scientist at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO before co-founding Nourish with Ben Leita in early 2020.
Berkeley-based startup Mission Barns – which has developed a platform to grow fat from animal cells, outside of the animal – says that even a small amount of animal fat can transform the function, flavor, and mouthfeel of a plant-based product. (Pic credit: Mission Barns)
While come commentators wonder if combining animal and plant ingredients could confuse consumers, Mission Barns – founded in 2018 -says “Dozens of alternative meat companies have reached out because they understand that fat equals flavor.”
Motif FoodWorks is a Boston-based startup focused on high-impact ingredients that can be added to plant- based meat and dairy formulations in small quantities but make a significant difference to the eating experience. (Pic credit: Motif FoodWorks.)
The firm – which has raised a cool $345m since 2019 – will commercialize its first ingredient, designed to improve the flavor and performance of plant based meat, by the end of this year, with a second ingredient focused on improving texture in plant-based meat, to follow in early 2022.
Nova Scotia based Smallfood - a new player in the burgeoning alternative protein space – is developing a novel Non GMO complete protein sourced from a single-celled marine microorganism, which it claims can give animal and plant proteins a run for their money. (Pic credits: Smallfood.)
“We spent years bioprospecting, exploring what’s the perfect protein and asking what microorganism – the planet’s most energy efficient biological production system - can produce it?" says CEO Marc St-Onge. "So that required sequencing more than 20,000 unique microorganisms, which produced one candidate that produces a protein that more closely mirrors the amino acid profile of beef than plants.
“It’s a wild type strain so there’s no genetic modification [unlike some microbial proteins that are currently being produced with the aid of synthetic biology], but there’s a process of domestication; we had to learn how to grow it in an optimized way to ensure it remains happy and productive in a controlled environment.”
At industrial scale, the protein concentrates will be price competitive to plant-based protein concentrates and isolates, while offering superior functionality and nutrition, claims St-Onge, who has raised more than CAD$20m to date, and is now raising a Series B round to fund commercial scale production.
Sacramento-based The Better Meat Co – a startup best-known for providing plant-based meat enhancers – recently unveiled a brand new innovation: Rhiza mycoprotein, a fungi-based meat alternative that “works phenomenally both in ground meat form and whole muscle form.” (Pic credit: The Better Meat Co.)
A type of filamentous fungi that feeds on sorghum- and potato-based feedstock to produce a pale-colored, neutral-tasting ingredient “that looks a bit like chicken,” Rhiza (PDCAAS score of 0.96) is “meatier than Quorn” with a fibrous, meaty texture that does not require significant downstream processing or extrusion to serve as an attractive meat alternative, claims co-founder Paul Shapiro.
Iraeli firm NextFerm Technologies – one of a flurry of players developing new protein sources from microbes - is gearing up for the 2022 commercial launch of ProteVin, a vegan, non-GMO, yeast-based protein, following successful testing at pilot scale at facilities in the US. (Pic credit: NextFerm Technologies.)
Samples of ProteVin produced at pilot scale were analyzed by independent laboratories, an internal team of taste testers and a potential customer, and found to match the qualities of the lab-scale product, says co-founder and CEO Boaz Noy.
“I’ve spent 20 years in food tech, but I feel like this is the first time I’ve been at the center of the biggest trend, which is alternative protein. ProteVin is vegan, but has animal-like nutritional value, but also comes with a neutral taste and flavor, which is one of the most important factors for food companies.”
Engineered using a patented process that reduces particle sizes from 200-500 microns to under 2 microns, MicroSalt has the consistency of powder (but doesn’t clump together as long as it remains dry) and can help snack manufacturers slash sodium by 50% and retain their clean labels because it is listed simply as ‘salt’ on the ingredients list, says CEO Victor Hugo Manzanilla.
The tiny MicroSalt particles, which deliver a disproportionately salty taste for their size by maximizing surface area relative to volume, are ideal for dry-surface topical applications such as chips, nuts, and popcorn.
