BioZone researcher Peter Stogios is using funding from the Good Food Institute to search for growth factors that can make growing meat in a culture dish less expensive. 
Animal source-free clean meat production requires the use of serum-free growth media to culture muscle tissue. However, the scale-up and commercialization of clean meat is hindered by the prohibitive cost of serum-free media, which is mainly due to the cost of recombinant growth factor production. This project, utilizes genomics, protein structure-guided functional characterization and protein engineering to establish the properties of xenobiotic growth factors originating in diverse species and to engineer synthetic growth factors for use in clean meat production. These reagents will be attractive tools for accelerating the scale-up of clean meat production.
Feature in Toronto Star: https://www.thestar.com/business/2019/02/21/made-in-canada-lab-grown-meat-a-possibility-after-grant-from-us-non-profit.html
