Israel’s ProFuse Technology has received a €2.4 million grant from the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Transition programme.
ProFuse was chosen for the EIC grant after a rigorous selection process involving hundreds of applicants, and the decision validates its technology and value proposition within the cell-based meat landscape.
The grant is set to fuel ProFuse’s growth and process to regulatory approval. ProFuse recently launched two key products for cell-based meat manufacturers: its ProFuse-S1 media supplement, which accelerates and optimises cultivated muscle growth, and the ProFuse-B8 cell line, a unique bovine myoblast cell line that replicates indefinitely without genetic modification.
The grant will empower ProFuse to advance its muscle cultivation technology. This includes scaling up production and developing ProFuse's technology to support large-scale cultivated meat production processes. It will also enable the company to complete the work required to obtain safety regulation approval for its technology, while furthering its partnerships with other cultivated meat companies.
Tamar Eigler Hirsh, ProFuse Technology’s CTO and co-founder, said: "ProFuse's technology, including media supplements and muscle cell-lines, enables significant cost reduction in cultivated meat production, while simultaneously enhancing its nutritional value, texture and taste. This grant will allow us to further refine our technology to support large-scale cultivated meat production."
ProFuse’s CEO Guy Nevo Michrowski commented:
"Regulatory approval is a critical hurdle for the nascent cultivated meat industry. This grant will be instrumental in our final push to gain regulatory approval for the use of our ProFuse-S media supplements in high-volume production.”
Aviv Oren, director of business engagement and innovation at the Good Food Institute Israel, added: "ProFuse’s success in securing the EIC grant underscores the significant role of government stakeholders in advancing CAPEX-intensive industries like alternative proteins that play a critical role in decarbonising the economy. Alternative proteins are still in their early days, and reaching full potential requires significant investments in R&D and scaling – much as it did it did in the earliest days of EV and renewable energy innovation.”
He concluded: “As the sector grows and matures, we expect to see continued government support for mass commercialisation of alternative proteins products and B2B inputs, like those developed by ProFuse”.
