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Can cultivated meat be affordable, scalable and sustainable?

Meet Quest, an EIT Food startup from the UK. Quest is developing ingredients that will make cultivated meat affordable, scalable and sustainable, producing low-cost, environmental cell culture raw materials, the building blocks for cultivated meat production.

04 Feb 2025
EIT Food West
2 min reading time

1) What is your idea?

“By far the single biggest challenge facing cultivated meat production is scaling up cell culture to produce the large quantities required to make a commercially viable product. Hand in hand with this is achieving production at a low enough cost to make cultivated meat affordable. A key factor complicating this process is that cultivated meat cells are anchorage-dependent cells. This means they require a physical surface on which to grow, and they cannot simply be adapted to grow the same way other cell culture products are made.

To date there has been a reliance on extrapolating from the biopharmaceutical industry, with attempts to adopt the same technology and know-how that has been used to produce medicines, such as recombinant proteins and vaccines, since the 1970s. However, scaffold materials for cell growth—commonly known as microcarriers—originating from the biopharmaceutical sector face significant challenges when repurposed for food production. These issues include inefficient cell harvesting, the use of non-edible components (typically plastics) the use of animal-derived materials, and prohibitively high costs.

To address this, Quest Meat has developed Neutrix™, a food-safe, circular-economy-derived, edible scaffold microcarrier replacement. Neutrix™ supports the high-density growth of muscle and fat cells in suspension within scalable bioreactors, enabling cells to retain their natural behaviors. An innovation, which not only facilitates efficient scale-up, but also significantly reduces production costs.

Furthermore, at Quest, we go beyond prioritising the performance of Neutrix™ with cells—we are equally dedicated to perfecting the taste, texture, and nutritional profile it brings to the final meat products. To achieve this, we have collaborated with multiple local chefs and conducted extensive internal tastings and material refinements, to ensure that Neutrix™ enhances the overall culinary experience of cultivated meat.”

2. Where can we find your products?

“Neutrix™ will be commercially available on our website https://www.questmeat.com, in mid 2025, alongside our range of high-quality cultivated meat cell lines.”

3. How has EIT Food helped you on your journey?

“Quest received €30,000 through the EIT Food Accelerator Network programme competition, which will be used to support a pivotal step in advancing the development of our edible, scaffold material Neutrix™.

The EIT Food funding has enabled Quest to conduct comprehensive food safety screening and nutritional composition testing of Neutrix™. The outcomes from this work will provide essential reassurance to our customers, affirming that our ingredients not only meet stringent food-grade standards but also deliver high nutritional value.

As such, EIT Food has helped to support the commercialisation of our products, while also streamlining the future regulatory approval process for cultivated meat products incorporating Quest ingredients.”

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