 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Saakian. We are at IndieBio's demo day number eight We are now sitting down with Matt Gibson. Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for coming on really appreciate it Who are you? You did super well giving your pitch with new culture. Thank you very excited to explain to people What is new culture? What are you guys working on? So in a nutshell we're making cow cheese without the cow Now, what does that mean? It means that we're taking dairy proteins which are responsible for the best traits about dairy cheese And we're growing them with microbes What that means is that we don't have to use a cow in any of our cheese making process So our cheese becomes more sustainable healthier and more ethical Dairy proteins with microbes. Yes. How do we do this? Very good question. So In a very simple way we take the gene that encodes the protein that we want So we want casein proteins, which are the most predominant protein in cheese And we take that gene and we put it inside a microbe Now all that gene does is just instructs the microbe to produce this protein this casein protein and which microbe We can't say that right now. Oh, okay. So this is the proprietary. This is part of the proprietary Okay, so so a micro a micro a food grade micro Yep, and you're bringing in the casein producing gene into the gene inside and all we need to do from there is Grow it in a fermentation tank and as it grows it begins secreting out our gene of choice I mean sorry our protein of choice and it's a matter of just collecting the protein adding some plant-based fats some plant-based sugars and making a Milk a sort of proto milk that we just take through the cheese making process So we acidify it then we add a rennet to coagulate it and form curd and we make delicious mozzarella Which is our first cheese product from there Yeah, the video of you guys pulling apart the mozzarella Yes, really great because usually the the vegan cheese lines or have really big struggle with yeah with the melting process and stretching Let's let's jump back into the process. So okay So so we have a microbe that has the casein producing gene inside of it It's grown in a bioreactor. Yes. Now. Does the microbe itself end up replicating and yes And so then that it ends up replicating plus then it produces casein as well. Yes, so there's two ways you can do it one way is where we Continuously the microbe continuously produces the gene as it grows so as soon as we put in the biorector It starts producing the gene I mean sorry the protein and it just continues producing protein as it as it grows and and fills the biorector The other way to do it is to just grow your microbe as much as possible So it's very dense inside a bioreactor and then induce it to pump out your protein to begin producing and pumping out your protein So there's two ways you can do it The first ways but can be a bit more difficult because if the protein that you want is quite toxic to the Microbe because it's not a natural protein. It makes yes Then it's a lot tougher to do it continuously constitutive expression is what it's called So we're using more inducible expression Okay And then so then you're making it so that the microbe grows larger and then makes it so that these protein proteins that it creates are Larger than and no so sorry Yeah, so I'll clarify that so the all we want to do is we take our biorector We want to fill it with as much microbes as possible in the sense that we put our microbe in there and it just begins multiplying Yes, so more and more microbes are in the biorector Yes, and the more microbes we have the more protein can be produced Yes, so we're gonna wait until there's a lot of microbes in that biorector and then induce protein expression Oh Okay, okay, so okay got it so tons and tons of microbes first then induce the protein reaction. Okay got it and then And then you got to make sure that the protein that it's creating that it does not kill the microbes That's well, that's part of that's the other part the constituent of expression Which is when they come constantly producing protein as we're doing inducible so we're inducing the microbe to secrete protein when we want We don't have to worry so much about if the proteins toxic to the microbe Oh, so you have to in you induce Manually and then it produces the protein and then you and then it doesn't again Yes, and then you do induce it again. So you're triggering. Yeah, we trigger in it You can only redo it once but it'll produce a lot of protein and From there we harvest the protein and we make cheese with it. Okay now now. Let's get into the process You said you add fats and sugars plant-based fats and plant-based sugars. Okay, and how does this work? So yeah, sure So one thing we hypothesized when we came into Indie bio was do we actually need animal fats and animal sugar? ie lektos to make great cheese or Do we just need the protein and can we supplement the fats and the sugars of plant-based options? And it turns out you can so as I see in the pitch we did a double-blind taste test we used dairy proteins and plant-based fats and sugars and The class couldn't distinguish the difference between Calzone mozzarella and our mozzarella. It's huge. Yeah, and so Reconference of the protein and that allows us to open up our cheese To lektos and tolerant people right because there's about 50 million lektos and tolerant Americans out there and Even though lektos levels and cheese are less than a milk It's still they still can't eat that much cheese and so we can simply replace the lektos with another plant-based sugar with the fats we can use less saturated fats as normally found in cheese and make sort of a healthier Cheese and the key thing as well is that there's no cholesterol because cholesterol comes from animal fat it comes from animal products And so our cheese will be cholesterol-free no cholesterol Yeah, and which plant-based fats and sugars again, so that's still something. We're actually a serratium So there's a whole iterating and playing with yes, so there's a whole different sort of Multitude of fats and sugars we can use from plants I raise you from for example fats from sunflower oil Coconut oil I'm just kind of the standards that you that you'd be used to nothing. That's um to extremely far out there It's very typical plant-based fats and sugars. Okay, and soon. Okay, again 50 million Lactose intolerant in the United States and then around the world much It's it's it's shocked me actually how many they were especially in more Asian countries That's two-thirds of the world actually have lactose sensitivity Yeah, and so it's actually because of course humans weren't designed to continually drink milk after being an infant, right? We actually developed a lactose tolerance from consistently consuming dairy and Believe it or not cheese was a big part of that because The the popular the popularity of cheese And how people loved it and kept eating it even though it made them sick early on And they were then to eventually develop a lactose tolerance So cheese plays a big role and sort of shaping really human the course of human history from our diet point of view Yeah, yeah, and then so now where is where are things moving with new culture then you have 500 samples here? Yes, and then Are you looking to take then the mozzarella and get it into stores is so yes So so it's those are proof-of-concept cheeses because the thing about Microbial fermentation to make proteins is that as you'll probably hear from other companies doing similar things making animal proteins of microbes It takes a lot to scale it up. So it takes it's gonna take us three to four years to scale scale it up Okay, so the proof-of-concept cheeses we have out there are more of a formulation exercise where We take proteins Individual proteins from cow's milk not our own produced proteins because we don't simply have enough of them to feed 500 people Okay, but they're the same proteins We're making from our microbes and we simply saying look we can make delicious cheese starting from pure pure protein So we know the formulation we know how to make great cheese from pure protein now as we scale up We just need to supplement the protein that we're getting from cows milk from our own produced protein Yes, yes, okay, and then the idea is that you're right there Even potentially cheaper and yeah, so we should we should get to I know this is America, but I go bring my New Zealand Sort of units here. So it's about 20 $20 a kg in 2000 and or in four years time around there. Wow. Yeah for our cheese Which is starting to get to competitive levels and we're talking about fresh mozzarella So not the desiccated mozzarella that you're great on to a pizza the fresh mozzarella that you make by hand They make a ball worth that's nice and soft That can be very expensive. And so we get into price parity in four years time Yeah, and enabling people around the world that are elective sorority Exactly and yeah, and let us intolerance not just It's let us intolerant as people that very much care about their health And so they don't need cholesterol and what they're eating or drinking Which is actually a big reason why plants plant-based milks are on the rise and of course the conscious consumers that yes you're a lot about sustainability and one of the fastest growing movements out there and Of course vegans and vegetarians that you know have been totally I mean I've been a vegan for about 10 or 11 years and I've never been a fan of vegan cheese to put it lightly and so I'm one of like my own target customers like any stunner. I'm sort of scratch my own itch here I really want a good sustainable cheese and there's just nothing out there. And that's a problem because cheese is One of the most unsustainable of all food products It's the most unsustainable dairy products and we need a good cheese Currently there's nothing out there that would enable anyone to transition from dairy cheese to vegan cheese relatively easily And we think that by me eating the the cheese that is created from from bacteria That that you guys make with new culture that that is Longitudinally if I do that for maybe 20 30 sedger years that I should be fine. We it's hard We don't have the studies in place. Yeah, do you think that? Oh, so yeah, so of course So what's interesting about cheese is that it's already comes or there's already a GMO sourced ingredient in there so 99% of cheeses are Using a Enzyme called Clemson and Clemson is what you add to milk to get it to curd and then from that curd you make cheese Now Clemson is found in the stomachs of many mammals and it used to be scraped from the stomachs of calves So people no longer do that anymore And so they make Clemson using microbes the same way we're making proteins Oh, wow And so they use get the microbe to take the gene that encodes Clemson put in the microbe get to produce this enzyme Then use it and she's making so it's quite interesting that all cheese already uses GMO derived products interesting Well, you used to scrape it out of the cow's stomach. Yeah, because it's the reason why it's the enzymes down there is because When we consume milk For us to sort of enable us to digest it effectively We need to curdle it and it curdles in our stomach and it's where the enzymes enzymes there and the enzymes currently being made by bacteria Yes, interesting interesting. Okay, so so it does seem like we should be cool launch to really doing this Yes Okay, and then again, so you were raising money to make the next steps to be able to scale this up That's the next big thing for you guys So we're raising 2.8 million and that's really mostly for us to do a lot of engineering of our microbe and what that means is more or less turning our Toyota of a microbe into a Ferrari and Really getting it to pump out a lot of protein and to grow in very dense conditions because remember the more dense we can make our microbes fit inside this fermentation tank the more proteins we can produce and So doing a lot of that strain engineering and also beginning to scale up. So once we Get our micro to perform very well, we can start looking to scale it up to 30 liters into 300 liters and then post seed onto series a will look to get it into Sort of in the thousands in terms of leases of or fermentation tanks. Nice. Okay, cool Yeah, like that the from the Toyota to the Ferrari. Yeah, the micro-capac capability says really awesome analogy Okay, sweet. I think this has been very interesting talking to you about new culture and that's your food. Yeah Thank you so much for coming on Matt. No worries. Great to have Great to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you and for all those that watch Let us know your thoughts in the comments below about the episode also do check out the links below to new Culture as well as Indie bio support awesome entrepreneurs artists Educators different scientists around the world that you believe in in your communities support simulation Our links are below help us out as well and go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world Thanks for tuning and we'll see you soon. Peace Thank you. That's a wrap Matt