BSF Enterprise plc (LON:BSFA) Executive Director Geoff Baker and Managing Director Dr Che Connon caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss company objectives, lab-grown tissues,
commercial potential, cultivated meat and strategic partnerships.
Q1: What are BSF Enterprise’s objectives?
A1: The objectives of BSF Enterprise, BSF Enterprise stands for Bio-Sustainable Future, is to address significant sustainability issues in modern agricultural practices. Whether that’s animals, growing animals for meat or for their skin, and coming up with technologies that avert that and allow us to access the products from animals without the environmental impact that’s quite clearly linked with their use and predicted use into the future.
Q2: Could you explain about the company’s IP and its impact in the process of tissue engineering?
A2: Our IP covers a broad range of tissue engineering expertise, and what we mean by tissue engineering is growing tissues from cells.
We have a range of hard IP, trademarks, patents, know-how in and around this space in how the cells are grown, the media, the cell soup as I call it, in which they are grown, their applications, and some other tricks that improve the efficiencies of growing cells into tissues. These tissues have to be functional.
Q3: How does the technology operate throughout the BSF group?
A3: The company first acquired 3D Bio-Tissues which was spun out from Newcastle University and that was based upon 10-15 years of research into tissue engineering. So, that has the platform technology and then how we’re working is that that technology is then licensed into some of the other companies under BSF and they access the technology via 3D Bio-Tissues.
Q4: You mentioned some of the other companies under the group, so could you give us a brief overview of those various subsidiaries?
A4: As Che indicated, we started off with an acquisition of 3D Bio-Tissues and that had the fundamental underlying platform technology that allowed us to look at a number of industries. Because there are a number of industries involved, we decided to set out a number of subsidiaries that cover off on an industry basis the technology that can be applied to cultivated meat, to lab-grown leather and to the cornea. We also set up a Hong Kong office that allows us to operate into a greater China which is a very large market in this industry and very fast moving.
So, the subsidiaries under the holding company BSF Enterprise allow us to be more flexible with an industry approach as well as potentially raising capital at a level of the subsidiaries where a strategic partner would want to invest in that particular IP application for the tissue engineering platform.
Q5: Now, lab-grown leather uses technology that creates scaffold-free media. How important is the role of scaffold-free media in tissue production and how does it differ to other products currently on the market?
A5: I think the phrase scaffold-free media is not one we use so scaffold-free material would be a better description. What we mean by scaffold-free is, unlike everybody else in the field of tissue engineering, we don’t use any synthetics structuring material as a starting point or these starting points could be plant-based either.
So, commonly people are using these starting materials, which are scaffolds, to grow cells upon, and the problem with that is that those scaffolds then have a significant impact on the functionality of the final tissue and really influence the properties of that final tissue. Such that the final tissue really resembles the scaffold rather than what a normal tissue looks like or feels like.
So, by omitting that scaffolding step and getting the cells to do all of the growth themselves, we end up with a product which has the properties of a normal tissue.
If we’re talking about meat, we’re talking about the functionalities about how it cooks, how it cuts, how it feels and tastes in the mouth, which are all related to the structure. So, if you get the structure right, then all of those things are there. When we talk about skin and leather, we’re talking about the strength, we’re talking about how it tans, how it’s processed, how it feels, smells, the wear and tear, these are all associated with the natural structure of skin.
We can recreate that because we are generating all of those different properties in that skin, whereas if you started from a plant-based scaffold or something, then it wears and tans like a plant-based scaffold would, which isn’t the same as natural skin.
Q6: So, is this alternative leather or is it actually real leather?
A6: Well, we believe it’s real leather, of course, it’s just not generated from a dead animal.
The removal of a skin from a dead animal isn’t part of the process, it takes cells, doesn’t have to harm the animal, and those cells then generate skin, and that skin then reacts and goes into a tannery as normal skin or hide would do.
So the product is, for all intents and purposes, natural leather.
Q7: Why is it important to avoid animal cruelty?
A7: You wouldn’t purposely go out and create animal cruelty, but animal cruelty is an emotive phrase, I think, and it’s not one that we would normally align with because we’ve lived with animals and used animals for thousands of years, and it’s part of our heritage. But the consequences of the growth in animal farming and the impact on water use, land use, is difficult to argue against.
So, ways and means of reducing the number of animals, because of the impact that their farming has on the environment, is the major reason for looking at these alternatives.
Q8: Are there other benefits for the process?
A8: Yes, so if we’re sticking with the leather, then the process, it’s the tanning process itself, can be made less of an environmental impact in terms of water use, just in the tanning, in terms of some of the chemicals used in tanning. So, you can actually create a more environmentally friendly tanning process by using the lab-grown skin.
Moreover, because of the, what we call rational design, because we’re generating the skin and we can control the organisation and the components within that skin, we can actually start to create advanced skin that creates leather with particular properties which our customers require. That maybe strength at a certain thickness or weight, and even more sophisticated things than that.
Q9: You’ve just touched on this, but are there other sustainability benefits?
A9: Well, solving land use, water use, and animal welfare are pretty big ones so I’m not quite sure if we need any more.
Q10: Significant progress has been made by the lab-grown leather team during the last six months, could you provide an overview of the commercial growth during that period?
A10: Just touching on that, we’ve been working with some very interesting fashion leather groups. One going back through last year that’s been steadily working with us, looking at the leather and how it can apply to leather in the fashion industry, which is where we seem to be wanting to head, given the high value of the products that are being supplied in the chain of products of skin going into leather, going into handbags, and beyond.
There’s been others that we’re tapping into and looking at from automotive, even from jewellery areas where people are approaching us to see whether we can create a leather product in those industries.
So, there’s been an interesting growth of commercial direction, I suppose, in trying to get to market quickly, to generate revenue on products that can make for maybe a smaller application rather than huge rolls of leather going out on an annual basis. That’s going to take time as we scale up the production of leather on a level.
Q11: Now last year BSF Enterprise formed Kerato to develop the LiQD Cornea device, a novel solution for the treatment of corneal tissue damage. How will this product work and what’s its roots and planned time to market?
A11: It’s the liquid cornea product LiQD, it’s brilliant in the way that it works, it’s still tissue engineering but it’s something called in-situ tissue engineering, so it stimulates the natural body’s tissue to regenerate itself, particularly in the cornea in this instance. It comes as a liquid, it’s dropped onto the wound in the cornea, the cornea being the front of your eye, and it gels in place and then stimulates the cells to grow and create that normal tissue inside.
So, it’s a very convenient approach that addresses a whole range of corneal wounds and diseases that normally require corneal transplantation. The scope is very large indeed, and in fact the demand for corneal transplants far outweighs the amount of material available in that space.
Roots to market, what we’re doing is we’re working very closely with our Canadian team. We are firstly doing a veterinary trial, that starts late this year, early next year, and that will give us the data needed to take that to a commercial product in the veterinary space. The regulatory landscape is quite a low bar in terms of what’s needed in order to have a veterinary medicine approved so that’s a really good starting point for us.
It allows us to further develop the product, get it into a commercial setting, and whilst also actually adding some valuable data towards the design of the clinical trial with the follow-up later on that year.
Q12: In regard to other subsidiaries, what does a joint venture with Cultivated Meat Technologies hope to achieve and how transformative could this be for delivering Cultivated Meat to retail partners?
A12: Cultivated Meat Technologies is a joint venture we’ve got with Cellular Revolutions, which is a technology company based in Newcastle and does bioreactors. We do a lot of the technology around Cultivated Meat as well as media, as Che’s been describing with City-Mix and the media that we have through 3D Bio-Tissues.
So, combining all that, what we’re trying to do in a transformative way, is provide an end-to-end solution as the industry moves into scaling up the production of Cultivated Meat.
What we’re looking to do is to partner with potential retail or wholesale partners in the meat processing industry in the UK. We ‘re talking to a few already and they’re very keen to see how we can help to create cultivated meat that would go into their food processing industry and production of products such as meat products that end up on the shelves of Waitrose and Sainsbury’s and other supermarkets.
So it’s quite revolutionary and we’re looking to not necessarily to rush out and create huge manufacturing facilities but license the technology that we can bring together on Cultivated Meat Technologies, the joint venture, and provide that to as many meat processors and partners that we were able to link up with.
Q13: How does the relationship with Ivy Farms help to support the growth of CMT?
A13: Ivy Farms is a great cultivated meat company that we’re partnering with in many ways. One is across in China where we’re working with them to raise money for development of one of their first large-scale manufacturing facilities for their cultivated meat.
So, we’re somewhat agnostic as to who we work with and what technology we’re happy to partner up with, and this just demonstrates an ability to work with as many cultivated meat companies around the world to help them succeed using our technology, using some of our media to be able to grow into the future. That’s the exciting part of the cultivated meat story.
Q14: Now, 3D Bio-Tissue is in the process of launching new products to market. Could you just provide some details on CytoBoost and which partners you’ll be selling this product to?
A14: CytoBoost is a really exciting new product for us. It comes off the back of City-Mix so we’ve been working with cultivated meat companies and supplying them with this City-Mix product which allows them to reduce the cost of their media.
As we’ve been doing that, we’ve also been approached by small research groups and things like that saying, can we trial it and can we test it ourselves?
One thing is in terms of the City-Mix, the way that it’s sold is in the kilogram amounts, in very large amounts, because it needs to be at a certain price point for high-scale production at the cultivated meat companies. That doesn’t really work for the research community or even by a farmer who would who don’t do things on the same scale as a cultivated meat hopes to.
So, it’s a reformulated product that’s sold in smaller amounts for higher costs. We’re still working on the marketing, but we’re going down a care for your cells type of approach so it’s a same way that you might have a range of products to treat your beautiful skin, you’d have a range of products which can treat your cells right.
One of the products called Revive allows cells to come out of cryo thaw and speed up their growth, other ones stimulate cell proliferation, other ones stimulate the cells ability to produce proteins etc.
So yes, it’s very exciting, CytoBoost. We’re just rolling out a ‘Research With Us’ programme so we’ve already signed up half a dozen scientists willing to work through us and give us feedback and work on applications with us.
BSF Enterprise, the owner of pioneering UK-based clinical and cellular agriculture company 3D Bio-Tissues, is unlocking the next generation of biotech solutions. It is achieving this through an acquisition-led growth strategy to drive the development of lab-grown tissues.
