VITA
VITA aims to make cultivated meat accessible and truly sustainable. Cultivated meat is an ethical, sustainable alternative to traditional animal farming. Still, it relies on old-fashioned bioreactors (designed for microbial fermentation and not tissue cultivation), making the process inefficient and unsustainable. We’re developing a groundbreaking bioreactor tailored for tissue cultivation through the Biotech Booster program […]
Carapace Biopolymers
Agriculture is undergoing critical transitions to address global population growth, increasing food demands, and environmental challenges. Traditional farming relies heavily on non-renewable resources like synthetic fertilizers and plastics, leading to soil degradation and increased climate stress. Over 60% of Europe’s soils are in an unhealthy state, with declining biodiversity and productivity. Recent legislation has targeted […]
Reduce and use landfill methane
Reduce and use landfill methane Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and about 20% of the emissions caused by humans originatefrom waste, such as landfills. Landfills containing organic matter produce methane-rich landfill gas over a long period of time, up to a hundred years. This landfill gas can be captured and channeled into electricity and […]
Glow-in-the-dark molecular diagnostics
Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is a versatile and sensitive diagnostic method that is the golden standard for DNA and RNA detection. However, qPCR requires expensive equipment, expert technicians and dedicated laboratory facilities, all leading to test times of multiple hours. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted both the strength of qPCR for infectious disease detection (ease of development, […]
Soil plant bioticum
The profound intensification of agricultural practices resulted in decreased soil health. In soil, microorganisms are crucial in ecosystem processes and are linked to soil and plant health and crop productivity. They facilitate nutrient uptake from soil to plants, augmenting plant growth and resilience to environmental stressors. The effort is therefore focused on steering soil microbial […]
Boosting crop reproductive heat tolerance by enhancing flower bud cooling
Climate change, i.e. rising temperatures, demands that the crops that we grown become more heat tolerant. In the Netherlands and many other regions where Dutch breeding companies sell their seeds, more frequent and severe heatwaves disrupt crop fertility leading to significant losses in yield. Considering that plant breeding companies based in the Netherlands account for […]
Plant Beams
Food security is a growing problem. The world population keeps growing, and climate change increases the risks for crop yields, threatening the global food supply. We want to revolutionise plant transformation and gene-editing by enabling direct and efficient transformation of any plant meristematic tissue via precise solvent delivery. We plan to reduce the time and […]
Super Mendelian Microfactories
Yeast has been used for centuries to make bread, beer, and wine. Since the late 20th century, it has also been used to produce important medicines like insulin. For the bioeconomy, where biological processes create sustainable products, yeast can be harnessed to make a wide range of products, from flavours and fragrances to materials and […]
ProteoT
As more people become aware of the importance of healthy food and the urgent need to tackle climate change, alternative protein sources such as plant-based and microbial alternatives are gaining popularity. However, methods for routine quality control of food products—particularly regarding their source, purity, and safety—have not kept pace with this growth. Consequently, issues like […]
