CP Kelco, a nature-based ingredient solutions company, and food ingredient startup Shiru, Inc. have partnered to discover and develop next-generation, plant-based proteins using precision fermentation technology.
Shiru's discovery platform Flourish uses computational biology to interrogate their proprietary database of hundreds of millions of proteins to find the best functional ingredients for every food formulation challenge, says the company.
Using precision fermentation and high-throughput screening, Shiru produces these ingredients and validates their performance in food. The objective is to enable food companies to make delicious, nutritious, and sustainable foods with a small fraction of the environmental footprint of conventional, animal-derived foods.
Shiru and CP Kelco will accelerate product development for several proteins identified by the Flourish platform. CP Kelco will perform scale-up of these proteins with its fermentation capabilities and further validate the performance of the Shiru proteins in food prototypes by the end of this year.
The first promising candidates for the Shiru-CP Kelco partnership include novel replacements for methylcellulose, a chemical compound used as a gelling agent and emulsifier in food products such as plant-based meat alternatives.
"Shiru is developing a range of functional ingredients that enable food manufacturers to reduce their environmental footprint quickly and efficiently—without compromising on functionality, taste, or nutrition," said Shiru CEO and founder Dr. Jasmin Hume, in a statement.
R&D and production teams from both Shiru and CP Kelco are already working together at CP Kelco's facility in San Diego to support the first prototype runs.
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