Biotech start-up Shiru to scale up alt-food ingredients

Precision fermentation start-up Shiru has closed a $17 million Series A round that will allow it to scale up its animal-free functional replacements for milk, meat, and eggs.

The latest round brings the Shiru’s total funding to $20 million, and was led by S2G Ventures. Other investors included Lux Capital, CPT Capital, Y Combinator, Emles Venture Partners, XFactor, Area VC, Peak State Ventures, the W Fund, SALT, and Veronorte.

The company's patent-pending platform combines machine-learning algorithms and a precision biofermentation process that allows it to produce novel plant-based ingredients. These ingredients have the same functionality as animal-derived eggs, meat, milk, and gelatine but a fraction of the land, energy and water footprint, it says.

Already working with ‘well-known’ food companies

Shiru says its scientists have “reverse-engineered” some of the planet's most popular ingredients from the molecular level, replicating the taste, texture, gelation, foaming, emulsification, and binding abilities of animal proteins.

Its dairy ingredients will be used to create animal-free products with the functionality of the original, such as cheese that melts and stretches, yoghurt that is thick and creamy, ice cream with a freeze-thaw stability that does not crystallize, while other proteins will replace egg as a binding agent and emulsifier.

According to the California-headquartered start-up, it is already working with well-known companies on producing beta versions to replace proteins, including those from eggs and milk, and it will use the funds raised from the Series A round to expand operations and scale up manufacturing.

It plans to double its workforce – currently 22 people – within one year and move to new, custom-built headquarters in Alameda, California in the first half of 2022.

Shiru’s CEO and founder, protein biochemist Jasmin Hume, said: "The global food industry is well aware of the voracious demand among consumers for sustainable food, as well as the sector's immense power to help solve our climate crisis. Shiru's goal is to make it simple and cost-effective for every food company, from multinational conglomerates to innovative start-ups, to do the right thing for people and the planet."

‘Reverse engineering the world’s most abundant proteins’

Its production process starts by searching for interesting proteins. It uses bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning – methods that are also used in the field of medicine to improve patient outcomes, it says – to investigate and identify the sequences, structures, and functional relationships that determine whether a protein could also be used as a functional food ingredient.

In this way, it can computationally identify which proteins are responsible for the taste, texture or nutrient profile and that could be used to replace animal-based products, such as eggs, dairy or gelatine.

It then validates its computational results using robot enabled high throughput screening. This screening methods involves a combination of chemical assays, robotic equipment, and software solutions that allows scientists to test thousands of samples in a matter of days or weeks and find the right protein candidate.

The next step involves inserting the plant ingredient’s DNA into a yeast strain, which then acts as a cell factory, producing the functional ingredient itself.

“Thanks to precision fermentation, [our] scientists make proteins that are exact molecular replicas of plant proteins that meet or exceed the functional and nutritional attributes of those found in animals. That’s how we reverse-engineer the sensory, nutritional, and functional attributes of animal-based foods – using only a small fraction of the land, water, and energy needed for livestock,” it says.

Chuck Templeton, a new Shiru board member and managing director of S2G Ventures, an investment fund that led the Series A round, said the global food sector was on the cusp of “an innovation explosion”.

"Shiru is at the vanguard of a new generation of start-ups that will transform the agriculture sector, paving the way for a liveable planet and increased quality of life for all of us,” he said.