By 2030, our planet will not be able to feed the people living on it. New solutions for food production as well as new food sources are pressingly needed. According to several reports, such as https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/combating-climate-crisis-with-alternative-protein, using cell cultures is one of the most promising solutions to combat future population hunger. However, scaling up those productions has been shown as a massive technological bottleneck.uFraction8 developed novel bio-separation instruments that can effectively, sustainably, and at low cost, harvest and dewater cellular biomass. uFraction8 has already proven this with cultures of yeast and microalgae - microscopic seaweeds. Today's world is excited about the next big thing - cultured meat - where just a few cells taken from the animal can allow the production of thousands of burgers. However, working with animal cells is much more complex than culturing or fermenting yeast and microalgae. Mammalian cells are not only notoriously difficult to grow but also very sensitive to external factors, making processing cultured meat an extremely difficult task. Results collected to date from testing uFraction8's microfluidics bio-separation instruments give great bases to believe that uFraction8 microfluidics devices will be a perfect solution for handling meat cultures, enabling industrial production of non-kill meat. The ecological and ethical benefits of such meat production are beyond imagining. Reduction of cruelty, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, reduction of antibiotics and other chemicals used in industrial meat production. All that is possible only if companies like uFraction8 can support cultured meat innovators with emerging technologies for industrial production which will allow them not only to prove that cultured meat is possible but also to scale productions to the capacity needed to feed our constantly growing population.

This project is to develop and test a change to the material and construction of uFraction8's stacked microfluidic bioseparation system prototyped in partnership with Smallfoood Inc, Canada, for the production of novel protein sources (from microbial culture) supported by InnovateUK project 105617\. uFraction8's technology enhance the productivity of food production processes. The design of uFraction8's core microfluidic components changed dramatically over the course of the previous project and has led to potential complications with manufacture at scale of the new designs. Though the proof of concept (PoC) demonstrated the desired performance benefits to Smallfood Inc. and the broader market, it requires further innovation and development to find a scalable manufacturing solution to be able to economically produce the newly developed design. This project will explore the use of polymer materials to replace the stainless steel used in the PoC. By changing the material, several engineering aspects need to be reconsidered around patterning, construction, alignment and sealing of the stacked microfluidic modules. Using rapid prototyping and specialist subcontractors to explore the two identified approaches to patterning and three types of bonding, validation testing will be carried out in the same manner as the original PoC was tested and validated. The test platform built during 105617 will be re-used. Initial performance testing will be characterised in-house using representative precision microbeads and analytical equipment (spectrophotometry and haemocytometry). Subsequently, a full-scale batch of culture will be grown through our subcontractor and analysed by dry weight and flow cytometry. By establishing a new process for the economical manufacture of stacked microfluidic bioseparation systems, uFraction8 will enhance productivity for food processing technologies. The efficient bioseparation performance demonstrated by the PoC will be deployed into the market at scale, maximising the impact of the innovation developed through the previously supported work.

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Microfluidics devices are widely used in cell analytics and cell sorting devices in laboratories all over the world. uFraction8 Ltd developed novel microfluidics based, industrial scale cell harvester with the immediate application in microalgae industry. Successes in harvesting microalgae cells as well as in small scale trials with other types of cells provided preliminary support for that other cell types (such as mammalian cells, stem cells, fungi etc), which represent diverse morphologies and viability profiles, can also be effectively harvested with uFraction8 device without causing any harm to the subject of harvest. To be able to determine the impact uFraction8 device will have on sorting those cells, reference datasets resulting from complex analyses are needed. uFraction8, being an early, small start-up will collaborate with the National Physical Laboratory who will provide necessary expertise, access to measurement infrastructure and bespoke knowledge of parameters which need to be addressed to answer all these important questions. Both this collaboration and the datasets are crucial for supporting the expansion of this disruptive technology to other markets that rely on and benefit from cell sorting and processing, including pharmaceutical and food industry as well as other substantial markets, thus enabling more efficient and sustainable cell-based production.