Cultivated Crustaceans
In 2016, Sandhya Sriram made the leap from her job as a stem cell scientist into the realm of business development. Having previously co-founded two startups, in 2018 she co-founded and has been working full time on her newest venture Shiok meats, a cultivated seafood company based in Singapore. In this week’s episode we explore why crustaceans and some of the technological differences between cultivating seafood compared to mammalian meats such as beef. We also discuss the startup’s encouraging research findings on consumer perceptions around the new technology and what this means moving forward, as well as how to find strength and support in moments of doubt and adversity.
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Image of Shiok’s ground shrimp being used in traditional dim sum, sourced from their website.
With over 10 years of experience as a stem cell scientist, Sandhya knows a thing or two about cell-based technology. But what was it that pushed her to take the leap from academia and into entrepreneurship?
Sandhya: “The whole gap between academia and industry was getting larger and larger, especially on the healthcare and biomedical side of things.”
Sandhya: “I definitely knew I was going to do something related to stem cells. But it kind of went back to me thinking a lot more about our food.”
Having spent her life growing up in the Middle East, India and now living in Singapore, Sandhya talked about the element of dependency and how that played a part in her decision-making.
Sandhya: “Middle East and Singapore don’t produce most of their food, they import 90% and are dependent on other countries. This got me thinking more about our sources of food and what was going to happen, especially to these isolated countries and cities that cannot set up their own agricultural systems.”
The development to settle on crustaceans? A process of elimination.
Sandhya: “We figured out that seafood is more consumed in Asia than red and white meat. On top of that the most consumed protein within seafood was crustaceans. Among crustaceans the most consumed was shrimp.”
At the time of Shiok developing into an idea there were no cell-based companies looking at this area of the agricultural industry, with only one company looking at plant-based shrimp. As a result, there was no research on crustacean stem cells, which only made her more excited about the project.
Sandhya: “I thought okay, I’ll give myself 6 months to try shrimp, if I can’t succeed then maybe I can move on to beef and chicken which is already kind of established.”
Sandhya: “Then came my co-founder Ka Yi, who was even more excited about seafood than me and we joined forces.”
And as it turns out, Sandhya was right to get excited about doing research on crustacean stem cells because it seems the process has quite a few differences that may even put it at an advantage when compared to meats we regularly think of such as beef.
Sandhya: “If you take a piece of shrimp, de-shell and de-vein it, what you have left behind is the meat that you consume which is actually 100% muscle. There is no other cell-type, there is no mixing of fat vs. connected tissue which is a part of beef or pork.”
This removes a lot of complication as instead of trying to figure out how to grow and scale four types of cells, you’re only focussed on the one. Seafood cells are also in suspension.
Sandhya: “Generally when you culture stem cells outside of the animal’s body they tend to stick to the surfaces on which they are grown.”
Sandhya: “The good thing with seafood cells is that they float, they’re in suspension and that works great for scale-up and placing them in large scale fermenters or bio-reactors for production.”
Another key difference is the fact that crustaceans are in a different animal kingdom altogether.
Sandhya: “Crustaceans are actually insects… so their characteristics are very similar which is that they’re easy to grow, they’re robust and can usually grow in any atmosphere and in larger quantities.’
Sandhya also mentioned that cultivating seafood doesn’t require FBS which is currently used as the main media type for cultivating mammalian muscle. So in that case how do the cells grow?
Sandhya: “At this point we don’t know exactly what the cells need to grow. We know that they need a mix of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. There are alternatives in the pharmaceutical industry where each component is synthetically produced, mixed together and sold as an animal-free media which is what we’re using for our R&D but what we have done in-house and in collaboration with other companies is swap out some of the ingredients with plant extracts from seaweed, algae, soy, fungi/mushroom.’
In other words the team at Shiok are rethinking media altogether, to be more centred around what the animal actually eats in its natural environment and how this can be broken down in a way that the cells can use it as nutrients to grow.
At the moment Shiok is primarily focussed on creating ground crustacean products. We asked Sandhya what was the reason behind this decision.
Sandhya: “The crustacean market is ~ $150 billion USD, that’s what it will be in the next three years. Out of that, 25% is minced products - not structured, not the ones with shells.”
Sandhya: “It’s a huge market just for minced products, so we may as well enter with that, get people to like it and buy it, and our second generation can be a structured product.”
And all of this essentially comes down to an understanding of the consumer. Being able to research what chefs and customers prefer and would like to see on the market is key, just as with any other business. Sandhya and her team have also recently conducted a study looking at consumer perceptions around cell-based technology and the results they found were pretty extraordinary.
Sandhya: “It was mind-blowing. We did the analysis - we had to keep re-doing the analysis because we thought we got the numbers wrong!”
Sandhya: “78% of Singapore’s consumers want to buy and eat cell-based meats. That’s a huge number compared to generally 48-52% in other countries.”
The reasons driving the 78%?
Sustainability
Environment
Health
Sandhya: “We found the younger generation was more accepting and excited for these products, which we kind of thought would be.”
Sandhya: “There are also 2% early adopters that are willing to pay a 40-50% premium for this product, which is a good enough start for us.”
The study was also interesting to engage with what was still limiting the technology from being accepted by society, with unfamiliarity of foods being at the top. How are the company planning on tackling this? Education.
Sandhya: “Since starting Shiok meats one of our key arms is doing consumer education. We know that this is such a new technology, it won’t be easy for everybody to understand.”
Sandhya: “Our website carries these infographics, we also have a FAQ section that puts together concerns and questions.”
Image of one of Shiok Meat’s infographics used for consumer education. Sourced from their website.
Shiok is also a female-led company. In light of it being International Women’s Day at the time of recording, I wanted to ask Sandhya if there had been any challenges for her and her co-founder Ka Yi.
Sandhya: “The challenges we faced were more centred around being inexperienced and young.”
Sandhya: “The second challenge we faced was scientists becoming entrepreneurs.”
Sandhya went on to talk about how many biotech companies or ventures are started as spin-offs from major universities, and that the risk involved in doing everything on their own and with little funding attracted a large portion of doubt from others.
Sandhya: “I think as long as you have the strive and passion, the mental strength to push through and not burn out, I think that’s important.”
To keep in touch with Shiok Meats and follow their journey you can find them on social media, or learn more on their website.