Biotechnology startup Tiamat Sciences announced its $3 million seed financing round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm True Ventures with participation from Social Impact Capital and Cantos. Tiamat Sciences manufactures animal-free proteins using a proprietary plant molecular farming platform. By replacing costly bioreactors with plants, the company produces key reagents for biotechnology companies at a fraction of the cost.
Those reinvented biomolecules are used to fuel the next generation of biotechnology innovations in various fields such as cellular agriculture and cultivated meat, regenerative medicine, and novel vaccine production. These new fields rely on reagents accounting for more than 80% of the production cost. But Tiamat offers key proteins 10X cheaper than the current market offers with fermentation technologies.
“Our technology can help to promote animal-free alternatives not only for food but also for the pharmaceutical industry,” said France-Emmanuelle Adil, founder and CEO of Tiamat Sciences. “Plants are a great system to work with; they grow fast, are small water and energy consumers, and they are compostable. The technology offers flexibility with production for a diversified product portfolio.”
The Tiamat team designed its proprietary production process by combining biotechnology, vertical farming, and computation design to reinvent recombinant proteins. While having already achieved a 10X cost decrease for its current products with lab-scale practices, the company is planning to achieve a cost decrease of 1,000X by 2025 with large-scale production for a wide catalog of products.
With its two operating sites, in Belgium and the U.S., team Tiamat is forging global partnerships and preparing its expansion to include additional local production facilities. The company is already on its way to reach carbon-neutral production. Those strategies will allow Tiamat to reduce its environmental footprint and offer string supplies in a field that has endured numerous raw material shortages over the past several years.
“From regenerative medicine to cellular agriculture, numerous companies are looking for animal-free solutions for their activities,” said Adil.