Cellular Agriculture/Complementary Proteins

Overview

Esco Aster via AsterMavors is providing end to end food ingredient and food product contract development and manufacturing services.
AsterMavors provide a cost-efficient and linearly scalable food ingredient and product process. This bioprocessing technology is based on the Tide Motion platform which replicates in vivo like natural process for growing fat and muscles in similar ratios to traditional cuts of meat.

Workflows for food ingredient and food products using AsterMavors

Workflows for food ingredient and food products using AsterMavors

Capabilities:

Food Ingredients
Food Ingredients
Food Products
Food Products

Cellular Agriculture / Complementary Protein Food Ingredients

Utilizing our bioreactors and fermentation capabilities, we are providing from small scale to pilot scale for both process development/validation – enabling commercial scale up as well as pilot scale for a soft launch and consumer tasting.
These range from Fermentation based, Fully Cultivated to Hybrid based which are combinations of plant based to cultivated fat and other fermented enzymes, or flavorings.

Hybrid Meat from cell-based meat and microbial/plant-based materials - workflows

Adherent Cell Culture Esco Aster Tide Motion Bioreactors enable scaling up of biomass or cell proliferation with non-edible scaffolds. These are commonly used for iPSC Cellular Agriculture in which cells are adherent in nature and are not bioengineered into suspension.
Esco Aster Tide Motion Bioreactors are the only adherent platform with a closed cell harvesting platform to enable preparation of seed cells to seed to larger packed bed bioreactors.

iPscs for Cell-based Meat Product

Cellular Agriculture / Complementary Protein Food Products

Esco Aster Tide Motion Platform when used in conjunction with edible bioscaffolds is used to produce for instance whole kebabs for sales as a final food product or tissue proliferation

Esco Aster Tide Motion is linearly scalable up to 55,000L in packed bed volume equating to 55,000kg of protein per batch. Refer to our scalable Tide Motion process development.

Cellular Agriculture / Complementary Protein Food Products
Bioscaffolds

Bioscaffolds enable a full organoleptic experience and provide a gustatory delight as well as additional nutritional benefits and enable scaffolding / texturing for the meaty chewing sensation to enable cellular agriculture and complementary proteins to be a true epicurean sensation.

Scaffolds which mimic extracellular matrix are either designed to breakdown as cells grow on them so that the cells can replace the scaffolds with their own material (extracellular matrix) or designed to remain integrated into final product.

Other decellularized scaffolds many which are plant based include spinach, celery, artichoke, mushrooms, jackfruit to other nanostructures from bacterially producing collagen, cellulose, carrageenan, zein (a corn protein), maize, silk alginate (seaweed). Decellularization removes cells by using chemicals or enzymes while retaining the original ECM structure. Plant-based scaffolds offer high biocompatibility and low immunogenicity (as these materials are already eaten as food).

Biopolymers such as collagen, which is a structural protein found in our cellular ECM, can also be produced in large scale in yeast or bacteria to form ECM-like scaffold. It offers low immunogenicity but poor mechanical properties, which can be circumvented by cross-linking to other biopolymers.

Other methods such as bioprinting fungal mycelium which can be cultured into prefabricated shapes are also being explored as ready to use scaffolds. These fungal scaffolds do not need decellularization and demonstrated to form structures by introducing different conditions (i.e., changing sugar source).

Recellularization of these structures can be achieved using Tide Motion perfusion at low flow rates (low shear stress) to prevent damage to the native structure. This accounts for the importance of the scaffold’s porosity – nutrients, gases, and waste must be able to flow towards the different sections of the scaffold and cells. For iPSC and MSC recellularization, differentiation can be achieved through the use of additional growth factors/transcription factors for plant/fungal-based scaffolds as these do not contain cues for muscle cell differentiation. Recellularization can also be achieved through 3D bioprinting to make designing complex scaffold, hence other textured meats, possible.

food automation

Utilizing our automation knowhow for cell culture and vertically integrated sheet metal fabrication, Esco Aster can produce, co-develop and fabricate food automation/bioprinting and custom made food processing and packaging machinery with other industry collaborators for commercial scale food product manufacturing as a full system integrator.

3D bioprinting techniques include extrusion bioprinting (bioink deposition and extruder removal), stelithography (light exposure-based sensing of structure), droplet-based (cells are deposited by droplets), laser-assisted (laser beam deposits bioink to substrate layer), decellularization, and electrospinning (creates fiber jet made from polymers).

concept to food product delivery and distribution

From small batch pilot production for food tasting and soft launches to final commercial scale up. We enable your food product from concept to delivery working with our MasterChef’s, food scientists, food nutritionists, food engineering/production to create Asian Cuisine Recipes.

We further enable market access and commercialization within ASEAN with our distribution channels.

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