Organoid Farm representative Taeko Yamaki Photo by Foovo (Ayumi Sato)
Organoid Farm, established in 2021 as a wholly owned subsidiary of JGC Holdings, is based in the Shonan Health Innovation Park in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture.
It is one of a Japanese companies aiming to apply the engineering technology developed by JGC Corporation to the practical application of cellular agriculture.
Organoid Farm representative Taeko Yamaki spoke at the 7th Cellular Agriculture Conference held at the University of Tokyo this August and announced that the company plans to open a pilot demonstration facility in 2027 as a “cellular food hub facility.
The company aims to make cultivated meat a new industry that solves social issues, rather than keeping it in the laboratory for development. In addition to bovine muscle cells, the company has established a three-dimensional suspension culture process that does not use scaffolds.
Yamaki explains that this process “does not use a special bioreactor, but a simple conventional bioreactor, which enables suspension culture without scaffolds and facilitates scale-up. It will also contribute to lower costs in the future,” she said.
Since inedible materials are also used in the production process, a 100% cell prototype has already been generated, although tasting has not been realized.
They are also working on analyzing it as a food, and have found that it contains a lot of protein and its amino acid composition is close to that of real meat. When grilled, it had a savory smell and felt resilient to the touch, Yamaki explained.
Currently, they are planning to scale up the culture process established at the lab scale. They are proceeding developing prototypes on a kilogram scale and plan to conduct culture experiments on a 200-liter scale by the end of 2025.
Yamaki said that collaboration among companies is also important for the social implementation of cultivated foods, and announced that they have begun selling Wagyu beef cells.
The company started selling them in response to the many requests they received from people who asked if they could share their Wagyu-derived muscle cells. They have already started providing them to several companies and research institutions. Currently, only bovine muscle cells are available, but the company stated that it will expand its lineup in the future.
The company also plans to open a pilot demonstration facility for cultivated meat in 2027.
Through these efforts, the company aims to build a foundation to advance the development of cultivated meat from the research stage to industrialization.
This article is an English translation of a Foovo article, published with permission from Foovo.
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