SBIR Phase I: Development of Commercially Viable Cell Lines for Cultivated Fish via Bioengineering

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is a novel means of producing seafood products. The method provides an alternative meat production to wild-caught fisheries of which 90% are at or exceed capacity, with many premium species lacking viable aquaculture models. This novel method of cellular seafood agriculture produces fish meat by growing only the required product such as muscle and fat, using scalable energy sources (e.g. glucose made from corn). The process involves expanding cells in a bioreactor and differentiation, followed by assembly, to produce seafood with no mercury, antibiotics, or microplastics. The initiative aims to supplement domestic seafood production representing one the most widely eaten animal proteins in the world accounting for 17% of all animal protein consumption, while reducing America’s reliance on imports across the $28B domestic seafood market of which 70-85% is imported. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop cellular agriculture in a scalable manner to meet cost and quality requirements. The proposed activities will improve the growth rate (cells per time) and maximum density (cells per volume) of specific cell lines in bioreactors. The overall goal is to promote the rapid and efficient proliferation of muscle-forming fish cell lines in suspension culture. This will be accomplished through (Objective 1) transcriptomics and pathway enrichment analysis to identify key genetic targets, (Objective 2), food-safe bioengineering techniques to confirm and modify the expression of these targets and finally (Objective 3) demonstrate efficacy in a pilot production system. This aims to achieve faster growth and higher density than current approaches (allowing desirable traits to spontaneously arise), to greatly improve the unit economics of cellular agriculture. The results from this project will serve as the foundation for future larger efforts to engineer cell lines optimizing growth rate, taste and preparation characteristics at cost and scale for cultivated fish. 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.