In recent years, there has been growing concern about the impact of traditional meat production on the environment, animal welfare, and human health. To address these issues, a new industry has emerged - the cultivated meat industry. Cultivated meat, also known as lab-grown meat, is produced by growing animal cells in a lab and creating meat that is nutritionally identical to traditional meat, but without the need for raising and slaughtering animals.
One of the leading figures in the cultivated meat industry is Anne-Sophie Mertgen, Founder & CEO of Micro Meat. A tissue engineer by training, Anne-Sophie was motivated to start Micro Meat for ethical reasons and to improve sustainability. She has been a vegetarian since the age of eight and wanted to remove animals from the meat industry. However, the industry was facing challenges in scaling up production, which led Anne-Sophie to develop a method for scaling up the production of cultivated meat quickly.
Anne-Sophie's expertise in tissue engineering has been crucial in developing a method that allows Micro Meat to produce functional tissues at a very large scale while keeping the tissues relatively small. This approach enables the company to grow cells on the same barrier reactor used for the initial stage of cell expansion, eliminating the need for additional equipment to generate these tiny tissues.
In addition to her work at Micro Meat, Anne-Sophie was also a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, where she was part of a team working on growing cells in space. She believes that her work on cultivated meat has applications beyond Earth and envisions sending cultivated meat into space so astronauts can have access to fresh meat.
The cultivated meat market is on the rise, and Anne-Sophie estimates that the market (not including seafood) is around 1.4 trillion worldwide. She believes that in a few decades, this market will become a lot bigger and eventually take over the traditional meat and seafood market to serve the growing need for meat and seafood. Anne-Sophie envisions that Micro Meat will be able to capture 5% of this enormous market with their technology.
Anne-Sophie's commitment to scaling up the process of cultivated meat production is evident in her goal of making DIY kits that consumers can use to make their own cultivated meat in the comfort of their own homes. Her achievements and aspirations are truly making a great impact on the globe, and she is a true inspiration to aspiring bio entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in the world. Her journey as a bio entrepreneur, and her dedication to revolutionizing the cultivated meat industry is admirable. By creating a more sustainable and ethical solution to traditional meat production, she is making a positive impact on the environment, animal welfare, and human health.
At Scispot, we are committed to supporting innovators like Anne-Sophie who are making a difference in the world. We believe that by providing resources and opportunities to bio entrepreneurs, we can help accelerate the development of groundbreaking technologies that can solve some of the world's most pressing challenges.
We wish Anne-Sophie and Micro Meat all the success in their journey and look forward to seeing their continued progress in the cultivated meat industry.
