Stream2Food: Utilizing Food Industry Side Streams to Produce Nutrient Media for Cell-Based Products
Stream2Food transforms nutrient-rich side streams from food production into sustainable ingredients for cell culture media.
Period: April 2026 - June 2029
Partners: COBIK, University of Primorska / Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Maribor / Faculty of Medicine, National Institute of Biology, Reni d.o.o., Acies Bio d.o.o., Datapan d.o.o., Mlinotest d.d.
Cell culture is a key technology for cultivated meat and many other biotechnology applications. However, conventional cell culture still relies heavily on fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is costly, variable between batches, difficult to scale and associated with animal-welfare and safety concerns. Commercial serum-free media avoid some of these limitations, but they often depend on expensive purified or recombinant ingredients.
Stream2Food addresses this challenge by converting underused side streams from the food industry into nutrient-rich hydrolysates and microbial lysates. These materials contain proteins, peptides, sugars, lipids, vitamins and minerals that can support the growth of vertebrate cells. The most promising ingredients will be combined into universal and cell-line-specific formulations designed to replace or reduce the use of FBS. The programme brings together food science, biotechnology, cell biology, computational modelling and process engineering.
The expected results are food-grade, scalable and cost-effective media ingredients and serum-replacement formulations for cultivated meat and other cell-based food products. The technology may also have wider applications in biopharmaceutical production and biological research. By creating high-value products from locally available side streams, Stream2Food supports the circular bioeconomy, reduces waste, improves animal welfare and strengthens Slovenia's capacity in advanced food and biotechnology.
COBIK's role
COBIK leads the eight-partner consortium from scientific, administrative and financial aspects. Its research role focuses on producing microbial lysates from selected microorganisms, screening hydrolysates and lysates on relevant vertebrate cell lines, optimising FBS-free media and validating the final formulations in advanced cell-culture systems. COBIK also contributes its expertise in bioprocess development, scale-up and technology transfer to connect laboratory results with future industrial use.
Funding
The programme is implemented within the Slovenian public call 'Promotion of R&D Programmes (TRL 3-6)', administered by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS), and co-financed by Ministry of Education, Science and Youth and ERDF European Union through the European Regional Development Fund under the European Cohesion Policy Programme 2021-2027.
