Biotech business CellRev collapsed owing almost £1m

A TYNESIDE biotech business focused on lab-grown meat production collapsed with debts of almost £1m, documents show.

- COREENA FORD Business writer [e-mail]

Cellularevolution Ltd which traded as CellRev was founded six years ago by Dr Martina Miotto and Che Connon to specialise in sustainable meat production, amid aims to mass produce lab-grown meat.

The Newcastle University spin-out had set out to help change future meat consumption habits and to speed up the development of lifesaving treatments, and was launched after a breakthrough discovery which then provided the basis for its continuous cell technology.

"Clean" or "slaughter-free" meat is grown in a lab and developed using cell-based technology, rather than animals, having initially been pioneered by a Dutch food tech firm which created the world's first cell based beef burger patty at Maastricht University in 2013.

Two technologies were created by CellRev to make it possible a synthetic coating that eliminates the need for animal-derived serum, plus bioreactor technology that means it could move from batch to continuous production.