Daily Archives: April 25, 2021

A biologist releases genetically modified mosquitoes in February 2016 in Piracicaba, Brazil. Technicians from the Oxitec laboratory released genetically modified mosquitoes Aedes Egypti to combat Zika virus. (Photo by Victor Moriyama/Getty Images)

Editors note: This story was originally published by UNDARK.It appears here as part of theClimate Deskcollaboration.

This spring, the biotechnology companyOxitecplans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses such as Zika mainly transmitted by theAedes aegyptimosquito.

While there have been more than7,300 dengue casesreported in the United States between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean,accordingto the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-relatedcases in 2020, compared with 71 cases that were transmitted locally.

Native mosquitoes in Florida are increasingly resistant to the most common form of control insecticide and scientists say they need new and better techniques to control the insects and the diseases they carry. There arent any other tools that we have. Mosquito nets dont work. Vaccines are under development but need to be fully efficacious, saysMichael Bonsall, a mathematical biologist at the University of Oxford, who is not affiliated with Oxitec but has collaborated with the company in the past, and who worked with the World Health Organization to produce a GM mosquito-testing framework.

Bonsall and other scientists think a combination of approaches is essential to reducing the burden of diseases and that, maybe, newer ideas like GM mosquitoes should be added to the mix. Oxitecs mosquitoes, for instance, are genetically altered to pass what the company calls self-limiting genes to their offspring; when released GM males breed with wild female mosquitoes, the resulting generation does not survive into adulthood, reducing the overall population.

But Oxitec has been proposing to experimentally release GM mosquitos in the Keys since 2011, and the plan has long been met with suspicion among locals and debate among scientists. Some locals say they fear beingguinea pigs. Critics say they are concerned about the possible effects GM mosquitoes could have on human health and the environment. In 2012, the Key West City Commissionobjected to Oxitecs plan; in a non-binding referendum four years later, residents of Key Haven where the mosquitoes would have been released rejected it, while residents in the surrounding county voted in support of the release. With the decision left up to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, officialsapproved the trialto be conducted elsewhere in the Keys.

According to Oxitec, the releasewas delayeddue to a transfer of jurisdiction over the project from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The company reapplied for approval to release a new version of the mosquitoes, called OX5034,in the Keys. In May, the EPAgranteda two-year experimental use permit, which the agency can cancel at any time.Stateandlocal sign-off soon followed finally giving the project the greenlight.

Oxitecs OX5034 mosquitoes are the first GM mosquitoesapprovedfor release in the U.S. The company has alreadyconducted a trialwith the OX5034 mosquitoes in Brazil and released more than a billion of a previous version, called OX513A, there and in other locations over the years including the Cayman Islands. The company says it is confident in the effectiveness and safety of the technology.

But some scientists want to hit pause on Oxitecs Florida trial, to find what they say is a fairer process in deciding to release the mosquitoes. Others want to see clearer proof that this technology is even necessary, claiming that the company has only released its most positive data with the public and has kept other key data, including whether the mosquitoes curb disease transmission, private. And if the release actually launches as planned, some Keys residents say they aim to interfere.

Critics also say that Oxitec failed to engage with local communities in Florida and get their consent to release the mosquitoes. Whats the most upsetting is that the very people that are going to be most impacted, both by the benefits or the risks of such a decision, have like the smallest voice in how these choices are made. I think thats a really big issue, says Natalie Kofler, a molecular biologist and bioethicist who founded Editing Nature, a platformthat advocatesfor inclusive decision-making processes to steer the use of genetic technology. If Oxitec doesnt do this right, she adds, we could have huge impact on delaying the use of other beneficial technologies like that in the future.

OXITECS OX5034 MOSQUITOESare programmed to combat the transmission of mosquito-borne illnesses by suppressing localAedes aegyptipopulations. Oxitec which is U.S.-owned and based in the United Kingdom describes their mosquitoes asfriendly because they will only release males, which, unlike females, do not bite humans or transmit disease.

At Oxitecs laboratory in the U.K., the company genetically engineers the mosquitoes, giving the insects the self-limitinggenethat makes the females dependent on the antibiotic tetracycline. Without the drug, they will die. Eggs from these genetically-altered mosquitoes which will hatch both male and female insects will be shipped to the Keys. Mosquitoes require water to mature from an egg to an adult; when Oxitecs team adds water to the boxes the mosquitoes will be deployed in, both GM males and GM females will hatch. With no tetracycline present in the box, the GM females are expected to die in early larval stages.

The male mosquitoes will survive and carry the gene. When they leave the boxes, the insects will, hypothetically, fly away to mate with wild females to pass the gene to the next wild generation, according to Nathan Rose, head of regulatory affairs at Oxitec. Kevin Gorman, the companys chief development officer, says the local female mosquito population will be increasingly reduced which will also reduce the number of wild male mosquitoes in the treatment areas.

Gorman emphasized to Undark that the EPA and other regulators found no risk in using tetracycline in breeding their genetically-altered mosquitoes. But some scientists think the presence of this antibiotic in the environment does pose a risk. According to Jennifer Kuzma, co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, tetracyline is commonly used in Florida to prevent bacterial diseases in agriculture particularly incitrus groves and to treat bacteria insewage plants. The use of the antibiotic for these purposes may mean that it will remain in the environment, especially in water where the mosquitoes breed, which could allow Oxitecs female mosquitoes to survive. While the company does not plan to release the mosquitos near areas where the antibiotic is used, Kuzma says the EPAsrisk assessment did not include testing of any standing water for tetracycline something, she adds, would have been easy enough to do for good due diligence.

Skeptics of Oxitecs GM mosquitoes include local residents,physicians, scientists, and environmental activists. Many of these opponents say they arent anti-GMO, but disagree with how the approval process has been handled. One group has even kept arunning listof what it sees as Oxitecs wrongdoings since it first began experimental releases. The list includes Oxitecs lack of disease monitoring in the countries where it has released mosquitoes; the unknown price of its technology; andcomplaintsthat the company hasoverstatedthe success of some of it its trials.

I cannot trust this company. I cannot trust this technology, says Mara Daly, a resident of Key Largo who says shes been following Oxitecs plans for nine years.

This is not a traditional pesticide, she adds. This is not a chemical that you can trace. This is something completely different, new emerging technology and we need better regulation.

Phil Goodman, chairman of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD), an independently-elected commission carrying out mosquito control within Monroe County, says that many of those who discredit Oxitecs evidence do not understand the technology. Theyre fearmongering, he says.

They have very little credibility here in the Florida Keys as far as Im concerned, he adds.

But people like Daly and Barry Wray, executive director of theFlorida Keys Environmental Coalition, disagree. We want to know its safe, says Wray, who notes that his group more generally supports GM technology. We dont have another Florida Keys ecosystem. We dont have another Florida Keys community. We have this one.

Daly, Wray, and others point to what they perceive as the FKMCDs disrespect for public opinion. They argue that the community wasnt given a chance to consent before the EPA approval. There was a 30-daypublic forumin September 2019 about Oxitecs technology application, with 31,174 comments opposing release and 56 in support. A statement emailed to Undark by Melissa Sullivan, an EPA spokesperson, noted that the agencyconsideredthese comments during the review, but critics think it happened too quickly to be of real use.

Oxitec has already released more than a billion of a previous version of GM mosquitoes, OX513A, in Brazil and other locations. Visual: Victor Moriyama / Getty Images

In June, Kofler and Kuzma wrote anopinion piecein The Boston Globe about the EPA approval, critiquing the agencys regulatory system and calling for a better process for evaluating new biotechnologies. The researchers expressed concern that the EPA did not convene an independent, external scientific advisory panel to review Oxitecs claims about its mosquito strategy and that the agency only publicly released its risk assessment after approving the technology. The American public, Kofler and Kuzma wrote, needs to be assured that these decisions are made free of conflicts of interest. The statement from the EPAs Sullivan noted that the agency conducted anextensive risk assessmentbased on the best available science.

Some critics also wanted there to be more public engagement. Kofler and Kuzma say they offered to provide their expertise, along with other outside experts, to the mosquito control district to allow more discussion about the GM mosquitoes with the Keys community. But Kofler says the district wasnt responsive. Oxitec itself launchedwebinarsabout their new product, but not until after the EPA approval. Here we are, like in the final hour, having these conversations that needed to be happening a year ago, says Kofler.

Without public trust and enthusiasm, it doesnt matter whether Oxitecs mosquito technique works, says Guy Reeves, a genetic researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, who stresses that he doesnt think the companys approach is unsafe. If the population in Florida Keys becomes so sensitized to this issue that they can no longer cooperate with each other thats good for the mosquitoes, not good for the people, he adds.

Based on their first generation mosquito OX513A, Oxitec says it has shown that the approach reduces a targeted mosquito population in trials in bothBraziland theCayman Islands. But theres no evidence that this new OX5034 mosquito release will actually be worth it for mosquito suppression, says Reeves. Oxitec also hasnt explained how their new mosquito will directlycurbhuman diseases, such as dengue. Reducing disease transmission and burden should be measures of efficacy for this technology, says Kofler.

According to Gorman, independent disease suppression data has only been collected by municipalities in Brazil because thats where most of the companys trials have been released in larger scales. These municipalities have shown that Oxitec mosquitoes have reduced dengue cases in areas of release, Gorman says. In order for Oxitec to collect additional data, he adds, the company needs to release and test large areas over sustained periods of time. Gorman maintains that the company is not required to report formal health impact studies.

Reeves adds that Oxitec also hasnt explained what resources are needed to sustain this product, how long it could take to be effective, or the cost. When asked about the cost of the Florida Keys project, Oxitec responded to Undark by email: Oxitec is a pre-commercial, pre-profit company. We will not profit from this pilot project in Florida.We are paying for it ourselves.

OXITEC HAS RELEASEDmore than a billion of their OX513A mosquitoes over the past 10 years. According to independent scientists, some of those experiments did not go well.

For example, researchers at Yale University and collaborators from Brazil analyzed Oxitecs 2015 release of OX513A in Brazil. The scientists confirmed that some offspring of the genetically modified mosquitoes which were supposed to die and not pass new genes to the wild population survived to adulthood and mated with their native counterparts. Between 10 and 60 percent of the native mosquitoes contained genes from Oxitec, according to the Yale study, which published in Nature in2019. The papers authors concluded they do not know what impacts these mixed mosquitoes have on disease control or transmission, but added that their findings underscore the importance of monitoring the genetics of the insects.

Oxitec disagreed with the findings andrespondedon the journals website. Oxitec toldGizmodothat Yales study includes numerous false, speculative, and unsubstantiated claims and statements about Oxitecs mosquito technology. And when Kofler and three other scientistswrote about Oxitecs Brazil trial in The Conversation, Oxitec pushed to have the article retracted, says Kofler.

For this coming release, some Key Largo locals are willing to act on their anger. Daly, for instance, says that if the mosquitoes are deployed in her neighborhood, shell try to put insecticide in any box she finds or send it to an expert to test even if it means getting in trouble with the federal authorities. I already have my arresting officer and she said shes gonna clean her handcuffs for me, she says. I dont care.

Ideally, Daly says, it wont have to come to that. She and other locals hope to stop Oxitec before the latest mosquitos are delivered. Daly says she has been busy organizing protests like one thathappened recentlyin Key Largo and giving out yard signs to residents who dont want their property used in the trial. Locals are pissed off. So I have been busy getting the press to cover the local opposition, Daly wrote in an email to Undark.

The first flying insect or animal that can actually use our human blood for a friggin trial for a product to come to market without my consent, Daly says.

Thats my blood, she adds. Thats my sons blood. Thats my dogs blood.

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Paradise altered: EPA approves first release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida Keys - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Genetic Engineering Plant Genomics Market | 2021 | Key Market Indicators, Supply and Demand Analysis And Growth Forecast | Illumina Inc, NRGene,...

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Genetic Engineering Market Estimates and Projections by Lonza Group, Origene Technologies, Inc., Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. The Courier - The Courier

I got into engineering because I wanted to solve problems and to have a positive impact on people. A natural extension of wanting to solve problems at a large scale with efficiency led me to Software Engineering. At first, I majored in Biomedical Engineering, concentrating in bioinformatics at Drexel University. Someone once called me a bad programmer so to prove them wrong, I minored in Computer Science, focusing on artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. I love solving problems in the biomedical field as much as I love the possibilities of programming.

At Drexel, I had three co-op experiences, which were full-time positions that lasted six to nine months. I worked as a software engineer at a start-up on psychology research, as a data scientist at a pharmaceutical company, and as a bioinformatics cancer researcher at a hospital. Each role cemented a solid foundation in applied Software Engineering on biomedical problems in various contexts.

My most significant experience in college was attending a local hackathon for accessibility, developing solutions for people with special needs. I became a better engineer by learning about the deaf, blind, and aphasic communities, in order to design solutions challenging my own algorithmic biases. Algorithmic biases are unintended aspects of you that sneak into your code. How do I check my algorithmic biases? By writing software with the mindset that software is intended for people who are not me. Continuous life-long learning about the diversity of people still applies to how I write software every day. I follow governmental software standards for accessibility (Section 508) to make software more inclusive for all of us.

I am currently a Software Engineer for a life sciences and technology company, Essex Management, where I develop websites and application programming interfaces (API). I am grateful to be part of an exciting and growing field where I get to build things that make a lasting and positive impact on peoples lives. Genomic information can be very complex, so I am very grateful for my background in biomedical engineering. Im able to leverage my scientific background to better understand scientific researchers and how they expect the software to help them analyze massive amounts of genomic data. One of the projects I worked on was called NCI-MATCH, a clinical trial which used genetic information to match people with cancer to potential treatment options.

I work with an 80/20 balance between technical and people work. This means 20% of my day in the mornings involves communicating with my team, which can include planning, design, and troubleshooting issues. In the afternoons, I focus on writing software or APIs to exchange genomic or clinical data. I also spend my afternoons testing my code by improving upon either software that I wrote or software someone on my team wrote.

To girls interested in engineering, communication is critical for sharing and building upon your innovative engineering ideas, so communicate early and often. Building a network fromprofessional societies, such as the Society of Women Engineers, Women in Computer Science, and American Computing Machinery, will open opportunities for you to try job shadowing or an internship.

Also, choosing your college major may seem like a really big, defining choice, but you can absolutely switch majors or even combine disciplines like I did. You can make this decision by using a gather and reduction approach, which is similar to the path searching algorithm, A*. Gather all of the information that you can and then reduce the problem set. Once you have all of that information and experience, then you can eliminate choices and find out which option is best for you. Some important questions you can ask yourself are what seems practical? What are you good at? What do you really enjoy and can see yourself doing almost every day, at least five days a week? What feels the most authentic to you? Its OK to be uncertain about your decisions. As long as you learn from your experiences and carry that knowledge over into your next choice, youll eventually make better choices over time (human intelligence not artificial intelligence).

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SWE Blog provides up-to-date information and news about the Society and how our members are making a difference every day. Youll find stories about SWE members, engineering, technology, and other STEM-related topics.

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A Day in the Life of Software Engineer Anna - All Together - Society of Women Engineers

Lifesaving vaccines such as Covishield and Covaxin are products of modern biotechnology, as are drugs developed in recent times for treating many ailments. The potential of genetic engineering is immense, with gene editing opening up the possibility of cures to hereditary diseases. Similarly, genetically modified (GM) crops are making big strides in bringing about improvement in crop productivity across farming nations.

By 2019, the area under precision agriculture of GM crops had increased 112 times from 1996, when the first biotech crop was introduced, making it the fastest adopted crop technology in recent years. During 2019, 79 per cent of cotton; 74 per cent of soybean; 31 per cent of maize and 27 per cent of canola acreages globally were under biotech crops, apart from varying acreages under 28 other smaller crops. A number of independent studies are available on the socioeconomic and environmental benefits of biotech crops. One such study estimated that net global farm income increased by $ 186 billion in 20 years. That helped alleviate poverty of over 16.5 million farmers globally and led to a 8.2 per cent reduction in global consumption of pesticides.

Bt Cotton, the only GM crop introduced in India in 2002, transformed Indias cotton sector, as cotton productivity almost doubled in six years. Indias share in the global production of cotton increased from 12 per cent in 2002 to 25 per cent by 2014. From a net importer of cotton, India became the second-largest exporter of cotton.

Following approval for GM cotton, several organisations invested resources and efforts in new crop biotech traits, hoping for similar transformational changes in Indian agriculture. Bt brinjal was one such technology recommended for commercialisation in October 2009, after it completed regulatory evaluation in seven years, and is still under moratorium. Meanwhile, the technology has been adopted in Bangladesh. One study in 2018 stated that net returns of Bangladesh farmers increased six-fold from Bt brinjal, and pesticide usage on brinjal went down by 61 per cent.

Another such stalemate is on GM mustard. India imports over 65 per cent of her edible oil requirement, as Indian oilseed yields are almost stagnant. This costs over $10 billion annually, with imports growing over time. Mustard is one such oilseed crop. But a high yielding mustard variety developed indigenously using biotech is yet to be approved for commercialisation. The regulatory system for crop biotech is inactive, with even periodic meetings of the regulatory committee being avoided. This has resulted in serious reduction in biotech research in recent years.

This impasse is due to irrational opposition to GM crops based on ideology rather than science. India imports over 15 million tonnes of edible oil annually, of which over 25 per cent comprises soy oil and canola oil (a variant of mustard oil), which are from GM soybean and GM canola grown all over America. Over 95 per cent of cotton grown in India being Bt cotton, we consume about 1.4 million tonnes of cotton seed oil produced from GM cotton. However, there is opposition to making available the same technology to mustard growers. On the matter of safety and efficacy of biotech crops, over 100 Nobel laureates collectively issued a statement in 2016, vouching for it.

It is high time Indian agriculture transforms into precision agriculture by using modern tools of biotechnology. The farmers agitation is also a reflection of deep anguish of the farming community about the growing chasm between agricultural income and income from other economic sectors. Farm income is a function of market prices and cost of production. While Indian market prices for major agricultural commodities are influenced by international prices, cost of production is a function of crop productivity. The current productivity of most of our crops is much lower than global averages. It is in this context that apart from reforms in the market and supply chain, we need to make available the best technologies to our farmers. Agriculturally developed countries are rapidly adopting new frontiers of precision agriculture tools, like CRISPR CAS9. It will be most appropriate, as has been the case with the COVID vaccines, if crop biotech, especially Bt Brinjal and GM mustard, is accorded similar sense of priority to improve competitiveness of Indian farmers and boost their income.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 20, 2021 under the title Biotech boost for farming. The writer is former secretary to government of India and former chairperson, genetic engineering appraisal committee

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Reforms must extend to making available the best technologies to farmers - The Indian Express

GAITHERSBURG, Md., April 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX), a biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases, today announced it will report its first quarter 2021 financial results and operational highlights on Monday, May 10, 2021, following the close of U.S. financial markets. Details of the event and replay are as follows:

Conference call details:

Date:

May 10, 2021

Time:

4:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time (ET)

Dial-in number:

(866) 652-5200 (Domestic) or (412) 317-6060 (International)

Webcast:

http://www.novavax.com/events

Participants will be prompted to request to join the Novavax, Inc. call.

To ensure a timely connection, it is recommended that participants join at least 10 minutes prior to the scheduled webcast.

Replay details:

Date:

Available starting at 7:30 p.m. ET, May 10, 2021

Dial-in number:

(877) 344-7529 (Domestic) or (412) 317-0088 (International)

Passcode:

10155684

Webcast:

http://www.novavax.com/events, until August 10, 2021

About Novavax

Novavax, Inc.(Nasdaq: NVAX) is a biotechnology company that promotes improved health globally through the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative vaccines to prevent serious infectious diseases. The company's proprietary recombinant technology platform combines the power and speed of genetic engineering to efficiently produce highly immunogenic nanoparticles designed to address urgent global health needs. Novavaxis conducting late-stage clinical trials for NVX-CoV2373, its vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. NanoFlu, its quadrivalent influenza nanoparticle vaccine, met all primary objectives in its pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial in older adults and will be advanced for regulatory submission. Both vaccine candidates incorporateNovavax' proprietary saponin-based Matrix-M adjuvant to enhance the immune response and stimulate high levels of neutralizing antibodies.

For more information, visit http://www.novavax.com and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contacts:

Investors

Novavax, Inc.

Erika Schultz | 240-268-2022

ir@novavax.com

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Jennifer Porcelli | 646-378-2962

jporcelli@soleburytrout.com

Media

Amy Speak | 617-420-2461

Laura Keenan | 410-419-5755

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Novavax to Host Conference Call to Discuss First Quarter Financial Results and Operational Highlights on May 10, 2021 - Herald-Mail Media

In 2009, Time magazine declared cultured meat one of their top 50 inventions of the year for its potential to curb the carbon footprint of industrial farming. This promising idea has since become a booming industry. Ever since Dutch researcher Mark Post debuted the first lab-grown hamburger in 2013 a $325,000 patty with an intense flavor that took two years to dish up nearly 60 companies have sprung up around the globe in pursuit of growing the perfect cut of cultured meat. In the first quarter of 2020 alone, $189 million was poured into these companies. Now that its gone from pipe dream to industry, what is stopping lab-grown meat from being available in a supermarket near you?

The chief hurdle is cost, which is related to what is known in the biz as the scalability problem." Every single slab of meat is an intricate mosaic of billions of cells of different types nerve cells, muscle fibers, fat cells, and more that lend a cut its specific flavor and texture. Researchers have spent years working out how to grow and sustain cultures of cells large enough to make meals at scale. Unfortunately, the mature cells that make up meat are only able to divide a certain number of times before they lose steam, a phenomenon known as senescence. Even if current methods could be expanded, the bulk wouldnt be considered truly clean; the nutritional soup used to grow most meat cultures relies on fetal bovine serum extracted from the blood of unborn cows.

A new ray of hope and innovation has come from a group of researchers taking a very different tack, coupling the raw potential of a special kind of stem cells, known as pluripotent stem cells, with a trick of genetic engineering. Pluripotent stem cells are often called the master cells of the body because they can differentiate into any cell type. Even niftier, these cells can divide endlessly and dont rely on fetal bovine serum to sustain their growth, providing a theoretically limitless supply of cells to serve as precursors to those that make up your favorite cut of meat. Differentiation from a pluripotent stem cell into a mature cell type can take months when left to nature, but neuroscientist Mark Kotter discovered a genetic workaround that cuts the process down to just a matter of days. Kotters technology, dubbed opti-ox, has opened the doors to streamlining the production of billions of cells of your choosing. While opti-ox was first developed to create an unlimited and consistent supply of human neural cells for research, its potential for the clean meat industry caught the eye of Daan Luining, the founder of Dutch-based food tech startup Meatable. The great challenge for them was transforming these animal stem cells into something consumers could eat.

They started a collaboration with a research team led by bit.bio biologist Anne-Claire Guenantin. Guenantin, a pluripotent stem cell expert, had never worked on cultured meat before and was now at the forefront of a massive breakthrough. Right as the project picked up steam, the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world. But Guenantin and her team werent about to let that stop them.

Guenantins entrance into the field was, in her words, by a bit of serendipity. Her roots are in biomedicine, investigating how pluripotent stem cells could be used to treat certain laminopathies, a group of rare genetic disorders resulting from mutations in genes that support the structural integrity of the cells nucleus. During graduate school, she became an expert in cardiac differentiation of pluripotent stem cells, transitioning in her postdoctoral career to a new system: adipocytes, or cells specialized for storing fat. Together with adipocyte expert Nolwenn Briand, she developed and patented one of the first procedures of its kind to derive these fat-storing cells from pluripotent stem cells.

Pluripotent pork cells differentiated into fat (red) and muscle (green) in 7 days.

Meatable

As Guenantin was emerging as a leader in adipocyte differentiation, she became increasingly curious about making the transition from academia to industry. I wanted to do more concrete science, she explains. While a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge in Prof. Antonio Vidal-Puig's laboratory, she met Thomas Moreau, Head of Research at bit.bio, who introduced her to the opti-ox system. He showed her research group a video of muscle cells differentiating from pluripotent stem cells in just ten days. I knew this is one of the most difficult cell types to [differentiate] from stem cells. I was blown away. The breakthrough made her next career step clear. I knew I wanted work there. That was it.

Luckily for Guenantin, bit.bio was in search of a researcher to work out how to differentiate pluripotent porcine stem cells into the characteristic muscle and fat cells needed to make tasty pork. Guenantin is one of only a few experts in adipocyte differentiation, in part because there is less interest in research around fat stem cell therapies compared to treatments centered on cardiac or neuronal cells. Her expertise in this niche field uniquely positioned her for this monumental task. When she was hired at bit.bio Kotters company holding the opti-ox technology she was tasked with programming the fate of Meatables cells.

Guenantins first challenge was to figure out how to sustain and grow a culture of pluripotent stem cells derived from pork. Its a really different thing to cultivate animal cells than to cultivate human cells, she says. The promise of human stem cell therapies has flooded the research field with standardized protocols and tried-and-true chemical reagents needed to reliably grow a healthy culture of human cells. The same isnt true for culturing stem cells from animals like pigs and cows. Guenantin estimates that the field is 15 years or so behind human cells.

After months of mining the literature, testing various recipes for growth media, and piloting different environmental conditions, Guenantin was able to find the right formula for growing a seemingly endless pool of happy and healthy pluripotent porcine stem cells. It was crazy interesting and really took teamwork, she stresses. Nothing would have happened without all the input from people working in the lab.

The next piece of the puzzle was led by stem cell biologist Sara Gomes, who worked to genetically engineer the opti-ox system into the expectant stem cells. Gomes and Guenantin worked together to figure out how to drive differentiation of the stem cells into the desired muscle and fatty cell fates. While the researchers at bit.bio had a protocol in place for differentiating human muscle from stem cells, it had to be adapted to suit the subtleties of pork muscle. Guenantin recalls, Differentiating the muscle cells was relatively straightforward, but for differentiating adipocytes thats where my expertise came in.

Guenantin and Gomess work at the lab bench was aided by the addition of two new research assistants to the team: Madeleine Garrett and Patrick Thomas. But right as their team expanded, the coronavirus pandemic hit. Guenantin, who was pregnant at the time, had to pull back from her work in the laboratory. As she notes, At this point, we didnt know if it was okay for pregnant women to go to work.

Gomes was left to supervise the work in the lab, which adjusted to staggered shifts to comply with public health guidelines, with Guenantin overseeing and advising on the project from home. The first shifts were stressful and bumpy, Gomes admits, But we quickly reached an efficient way of dividing the workload. The team had daily meetings over Zoom, both to discuss progress on the project and to check in with each other. I wanted to make sure everyone was okay, Guenantin notes. In the beginning, it was okay, but then back in May, [the pandemic] began feeling long and difficult.

The team, from left to right: Anne-Claire Guenantin, Madeleine Garrett, Patrick Thomas, and Sara Gomes.

But COVID-19 did not deter their progress. They worked through the spring and summer of 2020, alternating shifts in and out of the lab, to fine-tune a protocol that would reliably re-program the opti-ox-expressing stem cells into the cells of their choosing. Its a sum of small victories, Guenantin says. We celebrated every step because you have to do that as a scientist. If you dont, you become depressed because basically its never working until its working. To ensure the final cells were up to snuff, the team ran a series of tests to characterize the newly differentiated cells, tapping into Guenantins expertise in fat cell form and function until they were satisfied with the end result. They passed the pork cells over to their colleagues at Meatable who then got to work growing the cultures in bioreactors that provide a three dimensional scaffold for the cells to grow and take shape.

Meatable has continued to raise money to support bringing in $60 million through a combination of Series A funding and support from the Eurostars Programme. In the meantime, Guenantins team and their counterparts at Meatable continue to refine their methods to deliver pork muscle and fat at scale and have begun to turn their attention to stem cells derived from cows.

In the meantime, regulators recognize the demand for a future of clean meat, with Singapore becoming the first country to approve a lab-grown meat product in December 2020. The appeal of cultured meat cuts across a wide swath of consumers, including those passionate about cutting carbon emissions, those seeking to spare animals from the cruel conditions of factory farming, or ones looking for innovative ways to feed the worlds ever-growing population.

This project has raised a lot of questions for me, Guenantin says. It mades me think about the future generations and how this problem of global warming will end up. We need to think about innovative solution to feed the growing planet with tasty and sustainable products.

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This technology was designed to grow human cells. Now it's transforming the cultured meat industry. - Massive Science