CULT Food Science invests in Unicorn Biotechnologies Limited
by CM Staff
Unicorn Biotechnologies is building the hardware to scale cultivated meat from lab to table, a process CULT Food Science wants to be part of.
VANCOUVER — CULT Food Science Corp., an investment platform with an exclusive focus on cellular agriculture that is trying to develop of novel technologies to provide a sustainable, environmental and ethical solution to the global factory farming, announces that is has made a strategic investment into Unicorn Biotechnologies Limited. The investment was part of an oversubscribed round of financing led by Acequia Capital. Located in Cambridge, United Kingdom, UBL is a biotech company developing a cell manufacturing system that aims to significantly reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of the production of animal cell products.
The cost, time, and manual labour associated with cell-based adherent manufacturing have been significant hurdles thus far for the cellular agriculture and cell therapy industries, as well as for medical research. Currently, it takes over 40 hours of manual labour per production batch, approximately three years to scale production processes to industrial levels and costs a significant amount of capital for large-scale manufacturing systems to be produced. UBL is working to solve these problems by building better bioreactors to power the cell-based manufacturing revolution for cultivated meat.
To achieve its goals, UBL has reportedly developed a solution using industry-leading and energy-efficient technology. Its fit-for-purpose, high-density adherent cell manufacturing system improves process development timelines by 90%, achieves a 10-fold cost reduction and lowers the labour component by 75% through automated workflows as compared to current processes.
“CULT is excited to add its investment in UBL to its cellular agriculture ecosystem. We are keenly interested in the growth trajectory of UBL based on the early prospects of its potentially game-changing new bioreactor solution,” said Lejjy Gafour, Chief Executive Officer of CULT. “The cellular agriculture industry is working hard to develop economic and sustainable solutions to feed the planet’s growing population, reduce emissions and ultimately make the world a better place. I am confident that our investment in UBL is helping to achieve that goal and we look forward to collaborating with the UBL team as part of our growing ecosystem,” added Mr. Gafour.
