Leather goods grown in lab ‘just a few years away’
TYNESIDE biotech business 3D Bio-Tissues says we are just a few years away from labgrown leather goods after creating animal ‘skin’ without the need for animals.
Scientific engineers at the Newcastle company are on the cusp of revolutionising food, fashion and healthcare markets with its patentprotected IP which has already created cruelty-free meat, human corneas and now skin that will eventually be used to create leather.
It has announced that it has entered into a contract with a leather company to test and develop labgrown animal skin for leather production, although the terms of the contract are confidential at present.
Dr Che Connon, chief executive said: “It works in the same way that leather works, it’s made from the same thing – skin. The animal cells are used at the very beginning and a media to grow those cells. There’s a couple of tricks we’ve been developing over the years. One is to direct those cells, give them some direction they respond to and they arrange themselves in a skin-like way and importantly, make all the skin-like molecules. Once they’ve arranged themselves the result is skin.
“The other trick is the media, the food and liquid that goes with them. We’ve developed a robust supplement that does two things – accelerates that process, and importantly removes the need for the use of animal serum which is a byproduct of the agricultural processes. We’ve taken that out with this product called CityMix.”
Mr Connon said it would take around five years to scale up the technology before we see large, leather products come to the market, but it is already in talks with companies keen to make ethical goods from its pioneering technology.
“At the moment we’re generating 10 by 10cm squared tissues, just over 1mm thick. It’s translucent, it looks like skin – principally it is skin and it feels like skin.
“What we are generating is the raw material and others can then use their own skills and expertise and machinery to turn it into leather. At scale, it will be about five years – there’s a lot of intensive work going into scaling up the process, but we’re making small amounts today and larger amounts can be made fairly soon. Towards leather shoes and larger things we’re a few years away.”
The Newcastle University spin-out is owned by London Stock Exchange listed BSF Enterprise plc, an investment company focused on unlocking the next generation of biotech solutions, which earlier this year raised £2.9m from shareholders to inject into 3DBT.
The company has also updated shareholders on a milestone deal, which has seen it secure its first distribution deal and three new customers for its patented City-Mix supplement, which mimics processes in tissue growth. 3DBT has entered into direct sales agreements with two labgrown meat companies and one biotech company and while initial sales and revenues are expected to be relatively small at this early stage, the firm said it marked an important milestone. It added that numerous cellular agriculture companies across 12 countries are currently evaluating CityMix, and that 3DBT is progressing plans to roll-out a webbased sales channel for City-Mix in the coming months, to facilitate its direct sales model.
3D Bio Tissues has also made progress in building its indirect sales network, having secured its first distribution partner, Abacus dx, which is owned by Diploma PLC and covers Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.