SBIR Phase I: A low-cost, bacterial production platform for the manufacturing of high purity recombinant proteins and growth factors

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 第一阶段项目的更广泛/商业影响是引入一种经济高效的方法来为培育肉行业生产重组蛋白和生长因子。培养动物细胞来制造动物组织，包括肌肉和脂肪，使制造商能够制造出真正的动物肉，作为动物养殖肉的替代品。用这种方法生产肉类可以提供更健康、更安全、更合乎道德的真正动物肉来源。这种制造过程避免了工业化畜牧业，因此使用的土地和水显着减少。它还避免了工业化畜牧业排放的温室气体，并且排放的温室气体可能少得多。人工养殖肉类还可以让公众变得更健康，因为其受控生产可能会减少食源性疾病，并避免工业化动物养殖场可能滋生新疾病的狭窄环境。几乎在任何地方种植肉类的能力都提高了国家食品供应链的弹性，并减少了对外国食品进口的依赖。最后，通过减少工业化动物养殖场的数量，人造肉减少了对动物屠宰的需求。拟议的项目将展示创新的能力，以解决当前传统蛋白质制造平台中重组蛋白质和生长因子生产中的若干挑战，这些挑战阻碍了以较低成本和高纯度进行生产。人工培育肉有可能颠覆价值 1 万亿美元的肉类产业，但获取高纯度、廉价蛋白质的能力限制了人工培育肉产品的商业应用。该创新可以比现有平台以更便宜的成本生产蛋白质，因为它绕过了昂贵且耗时的操作制造步骤，同时仍然实现了高纯度。该项目的关键技术目标包括：1）建立重组生长因子生产的生产基准并与当前行业标准进行比较，2）优化蛋白质生产平台所需的生长条件以提高产量，3）创建制造平台优化工具包以提高生产的可用蛋白质的质量和数量。该项目完成时获得的知识可以为促进蛋白质和生长因子高水平生产的能力和条件提供有价值的见解，同时提供说明与当前行业标准相比的改进的数据。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to introduce a cost-effective way to produce recombinant proteins and growth factors for the cultivated meat industry. Cultivating animal cells to create animal tissues, including muscle and fat, allows manufacturers to create real animal meat as an alternative to animal-farmed meat. Producing meat in this method may provide a healthier, safer, and more ethical source of real animal meat. This manufacturing process avoids industrial animal farming and consequently uses significantly less land and water. It also avoids the greenhouse gases emitted by industrial animal farming and may emit far fewer greenhouse gases. Cultivated meat could result in a healthier public as well since its controlled production will likely result in fewer foodborne illnesses and avoid the cramped conditions of industrial animal farms that can breed new illnesses. The ability to grow meat in nearly any location increases the nation’s food supply chain resilience and reduces dependence on foreign food imports. Finally, by reducing the amount of industrial animal farms, cultivated meat reduces the need for animal slaughter.The proposed project will demonstrate the ability of the innovation to solve several challenges in the current production of recombinant proteins and growth factors in traditional protein manufacturing platforms that prevent manufacturing at lower costs and with high purity. Cultivated meat has the potential to disrupt the $1 trillion meat industry, but the ability to source high purity, cheap proteins limits the commercial adoption of cultivated meat products. The innovation could produce proteins at cheaper costs than existing platforms because it bypasses expensive and time-consuming operational manufacturing steps while still achieving high purity. The critical technical objectives of this project include: 1) the establishment and comparison of a production benchmark for recombinant growth factor production against the current industry standards, 2) the optimization of the growth conditions necessary for the protein production platform to achieve improved yields, and 3) the creation of a manufacturing platform optimization toolkit to increase the quality and amount of usable protein produced. The knowledge gained at the completion of this project may provide valuable insights into the ability and conditions to promote high production levels of proteins and growth factors while providing data illustrating the improvement when compared against current industry standards.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.