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Singaporean-headquartered cellular agriculture start-up Umami Bioworks is on a mission to cultivate the future of sustainable seafood by crafting delicious, nutritious, affordable cultivated fish that is better for our health, our oceans, and our future. The company recently joined the Planet B.io community as member. To learn more about the company and its vision, we sat down with Mihir Pershad, the Founder and CEO of Umami Bioworks.

At Planet B.io, we firmly believe that progress is best achieved through collaboration and fruitful partnerships. That is why we actively seek out opportunities to partner with esteemed service providers who are trusted by our cherished community members. In that spirit, we are happy to announce our collaboration with Service Laboratory Delft ‘SLD’– the Quality Control Laboratory for Food, Feed & Pharma, based on the Biotech Campus Delft.

In 2020, the non-profit organization Planet B.io was established to develop the Biotech Campus Delft (BCD) into an open innovation campus for industrial biotechnology. Planet B.io, founded and financially supported by five partners (DSM, Delft University of Technology, the Municipality of Delft, the Province of South Holland, and InnovationQuarter), has been successful in growing the number of companies on the BCD, and creating a supporting network of experts. Today, Planet B.io is happy to welcome a special, sixth partner to its Supervisory Board. ASR Dutch Science Park Fund and Planet B.io will team up to further develop the Biotech Campus Delft into a world-leading campus focusing on modern biotechnology.

At Nature's Principles, they pioneer the circular production of biobased chemicals by using unique fermentation technologies. The Dutch start-up, that recently became a Planet B.io member, is using open mixed culture biochemical production processes, utilizing unrefined and “waste” streams, with a low-cost, low-maintenance, easy-to-operate, highly scalable method, which can produce valuable chemicals such as lactic acid.

In 2020, DSM NL established the Kickstart Fund to support the ecosystem around Planet B.io and the Biotech Campus Delft. With a total annual budget of 200 k€, the Fund supports activities in three categories:  pre-startup support, startup support and ecosystem support. The funds are coordinated by Planet B.io.  

In March 2023, the VitroTEM team embarked on a tour of several prestigious research institutes across the United States. The purpose of this tour was to showcase their latest innovation, Naiad - an automated system for the fabrication of graphene liquid cells, and to demonstrate its transformative capabilities in facilitating the acquisition of high-resolution TEM images. Some of the institutes visited by the VitroTEM team were Harvard, MIT Nano, the University of Illinois, and The University of Maryland.

The Mibiton Foundation, actively investing in the Dutch Life Sciences business since 1994, is happy to welcome Cindy Gerhardt, Director Planet B.io, as newest member to its board of seasoned industry professionals. In this position, Gerhardt will represent the ‘white’ (industrial) biotechnology.

In 2050, twice as much protein (food protein) is needed to feed all people and livestock on earth. If we continue to produce proteins in the current way, i.e. mainly…

Nostics joined Planet B.io when they were just founded in 2020. Their main focus then; developing a nanotechnology based ultra-rapid COVID-19 testkit that takes minutes instead of hours, with a handheld device. Two years later, Nostics is a successful innovative startup in medical diagnostics, running a platform that allows rapid testing for both viruses and bacteria. By combining nanotechnology, photonics and machine learning, Nostics brings a new type of diagnostics to the world.