10014258Roslin Technologies: Leading the Science of Sustainable Protein by Developing Tools for Cellular AgricultureClosedInvestment AcceleratorISCFRoslin Technologies Limited (RTL) is a cutting-edge biotech company that aims to transform science innovations to provide solutions to global challenges in agriculture and animal health. The company, a joint venture between the University of Edinburgh and two investment partners with strong global networks, is based in the Midlothian Science Zone, one of the largest animal science innovation hubs in the world. This locale ensures that RTL is excellently placed to exploit ground-breaking innovations in the fields of animal science and biotechnology. The company's modus operandi is to translate ground-breaking innovations from academia to develop practical solutions that help address the increasing global protein gap and, in so doing, deliver products and services that support more sustainable food production. With this in mind, the company has three main technological platforms: Innovative Breeding Programmes, Animal Health Solutions and Animal Cells. The latter encompasses state-of-the-art technologies specialising in extracting, bio-banking, developing and cultivating animal stem cells. A key strand of this platform is the generation of animal induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These are special types of cells, generated from mature cells, that have capacity for immortality and the ability to be differentiated into an array of target cell types. As such, iPS cells can be exploited for a wide range of purposes, including stem cell therapies and, now, cultured meat production. RTL's fully-validated, IP-protected iPS cell lines for livestock and companion animals have been shown to be capable of differentiation into a range of key cell types (muscle, fat, bone, cartilage), providing evidence of their potential commercial application. In particular, the livestock iPS cell lines show considerable promise to supply a much-needed resource for the rapidly-growing global Cellular Agriculture sector. Successful early work has been completed at laboratory scale and the company now has several commercial Cellular Agriculture clients identified, some of whom are already developing RTL's pig iPS cell lines into cultured meat prototypes. RTL is now poised to significantly scale up this iPS cell platform, including widening its animal species offering and tackling key bottleneck steps for the sector, such as reproducible culture scale-up for cost-effective cultured meat generation. This project supports the key steps in taking RTL's iPS cell platform technologies to the next stage in which the company will be poised to service the growing number of international cultured meat companies that have been launched in the flourishing Cellular Agriculture sector in the last 2-3 years.