Fengru Lin, a passionate cheesemaker, was working with Google Singapore as a Territory Account Manager when she met her future co-founder Max Rye, an expert in the stem cells-based alternative food.
Lin, who was looking for unadulterated and pure milk to make her dream cheese but to no avail, wondered if the same stem cells-based technology can be applied to make lab-produced milk — which is richer in nutritional value and offers the same taste as those produced by real mammals.
This research ended up with the duo starting TurtleTree Labs in 2019.
What does TurtleTree do?
Singapore-based TurtleTree offers patent-protected technology as a solution to make full-composition, full-functionality, full-flavour milk referencing humanely selected dairy cow cells, then mimicking the natural process of milk production in the lab.
This is done with the efficient use of natural resources (land, water and energy) and without pollution, pathogen and disease risks. The result is the product will be 95 per cent less resource consumptive.
In other words, the biotech startup seeks to challenge the value gap created by an insufficient and unsustainable animal-based dairy industry. The firm does so by using cell-based methods used to make ‘clean milk’ and cultured milk products.
Also Read: Startup of the Month, January: Singapore-based biotech startup TurtleTree
TurtleTree acellular technology works by culturing mammary cells in-vitro and inducing their natural ability to produce all components of milk. Cellular agriculture is entirely safe and widely used in the market today.
The first step involves obtaining stem cells from sources such as milk. They are then transferred into an environment where they convert into mammary gland cells.
The mammary gland cells interact with a special formula which causes the cells to lactate. The end product is the milk is obtained through a filtration process.
The human breast milk the company is trying to recreate is to mimic the richness of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), which are the third most abundant solid component in human milk after lactose and fat.
According to an article posted by TurtleTree Lab, the research increasingly demonstrates that much of breast milk’s value lies within these components.
Furthermore, HMOs have prebiotic properties and are incredibly complex to replicate. Previous studies have underscored the value of HMOs in infant prenatal and postnatal development.
“We are able to produce the complete biomatch of the nutritional content of human breast milk. All HMOs, proteins and fats are replicated with our technology. A few areas that are unique to the mother are antibodies (coming from the mother’s blood) and the microbiota (coming from the mother’s gut),” highlights Rye.
According to Harith Behren, who heads Business Development at TurtleTree, “For human breast milk, we’re in no way trying to replace mothers from breastfeeding their babies, but as we all know, not every mother has the ability to breastfeed due to medical conditions or other situation, and then forced to turn into a formula feeding.”
Infant formula in the market today lacks the bioactive component found in breast milk. That’s what prompted TurtleTree Lab to recreate this bioactive component in the lab, to come up with a more improved and better milk in nutritional values for mothers and babies with no access to breast milk.
TurtleTree is trying to address the US$716 billion global dairy market and environmental crisis with what they called ‘clean milk’. It is optimistic that it can transform the US$45 billion infant nutrition market, which is set to grow to US$103 billion by 2026.
Seed funding
A couple of weeks ago, the startup secured US$3.2 million in seed funding to march ahead with its plan to produce lab-produced cow milk and human breast milk from stem cells. Investors include Green Monday Ventures, the renowned Prince Khaled’s KBW Ventures, CPT Capital, Artesian, and New Luna Ventures. All they were involved in TurtleTree’s pre-seed round.
According to Behren, the returning of its previous investors despite expected delays due to pandemic is a form of reaffirmation of their trust in the company and its team.
“We’re at the scale-up stage with plans to commercialise the products according to our timeline,” says Behren.
Government support
Thanks to the support from the government agency Enterprise Singapore and the firm’s investors who provided resources, the biotech startup made good progress. TurtleTree’s ability to move forward despite the heavy pandemic has a lot to do with the government’s direct support.
Besides, the company also benefitted from the support from other government agencies such as Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and the national research institute A*STAR. It is aligned with the country’s goals to produce 30 per cent of its own nutritional needs by 2030.
“We think the government is doing a good job on food security emphasis as an urgent matter. It certainly helps boost the investors’ confidence that their money is going into an established, mature ecosystem of future food security,” says Behren.
An in-country-operated biotechnology company like TurtleTree Lab seeks to modify the way people consume certain foods with heavy carbon prints, and it certainly a cause that the country should rally behind.
Commercialisation stage
Contrary to popular assumption, when tech businesses were mainly forced to adjust and manage operations, TurtleTree managed to keep up with the research and development work it was doing.
“We didn’t slow down our progress. We are committed to still having a small team coming in and taking turns week by week, carrying on despite the pandemic with strict protocol in place,” says Behren.
Right now, the company seeks to first address a propitious market opportunity in Asia, then move into other promising market areas similarly driven by increasing populations seeking better nourishment or encumbered by poor dairy infrastructure and declining environmental quality.
To be able to get on the wagon, the company said that once finalised, it will offer licensing technology to powerful local processors and distributors.
TurtleTree will own the technologies that make the milk, leveraging and enabling its IP across global regions, and manufacturers.
The company’s principal revenue streams include licensing, enablement consulting, and royalties. Additional revenue may include branded consumer products distributed regionally by global dairy companies.
“Now we are laser-focussing on the technology design and creating pilot plan activity to make sure we can bring the cost down on price point, as well as working on the regulation side. We’re hoping to work with SFA closely so they can develop a regulation on this sort of novel food,” says Behren.
With the country’s economy slowly opening up, Turtletree Labs continued its strike by winning US$1 million from Temasek Foundation, plus US$100,000 in investment funding and a spot on Antler’s accelerator programme from Planet Rise.
With that being said, the company is on track of providing accessible nourishment while staving off the threats of food, economic, and socio-political insecurities, which also include cow’s and other mammals’ milk as variety.
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Image Credit: TurtleTree Labs
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