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Today, June 27th 2022, North Carolina-based biotech startup Jellatech announces its major milestone achievement in producing cell-based collagen. After only 2 years in existence Jellatech is now announcing its successful development of a full length, triple helical and functional collagen made from their own proprietary cell lines.
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“This is a major milestone for us and I am beyond proud and excited that we are already here. Being able to see our clean cell based collagen with the naked eye – it brings happy tears.” -Stephanie Michelsen, CEO
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Collagen is one of the most unique and abundant proteins in mammals. The triple-helical protein provides structure to cells and tissue. Collagen is widely used across industries making up a $8.4Bn market including biomedical, health, personal care & beauty, materials and food & beverage industry applications. However, the protein is only found in animals. With an increasing demand for sustainability as well as supply chain challenges, many companies are desperately looking for novel sources for collagen. This is where Jellatech sees themselves as the answer.
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“We’re thrilled to see that our cell-derived collagen appears bio-identical to collagen derived from animals. Because of this, we have a wide range of exciting applications from biomedicine to cosmetics to food and beverage.” -Rob Schutte, Head of Science

Jellatech is not the only company with sustainable collagen in sight, as a few other biotech startups are also eyeing the lucrative collagen market. Cell-based collagen can have a few advantages. With fermentation and plant-based collagen, as well as other similar technologies, applications are more limited as these technologies are unable to provide the same function due to the fact they are not bio-identical to that of animal-derived collagen. This is the problem Jellatech has been able to solve through their cell-based collagen technology.
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“Collagen formation is a complex process that requires specialized machinery found only in mammalian cells. We’re working to harness the innate ability of these cells to produce collagen that is bio-identical to native collagen and do it in a sustainable and animal-free way.” – Christopher Gilchrist, Senior Scientist

Jellatech now announces a new major milestone achievement – its successful development of a full length, triple helical, bio-identical and functional human collagen made from their own proprietary cell line. This announcement comes just eight months after Jellatech’s showcase of cell-based bovine collagen. 

“This milestone further demonstrates that our platform technology for efficiently producing high quality collagen is translatable across multiple cell types, which allows us to address a broad market need for collagen.” – Rob Schutte, Head of Science.

Human collagen is used in a wide array of biomedical and clinical applications in tissue engineering, arthritis treatment, regenerative medicine, dermal filler, 3D bioprinting, among many others. 

“We are extremely proud and excited to announce the expansion of our protein portfolio with human collagen. Human collagen is such an important step in our journey to make a positive impact.” – Stephanie Michelsen, Founder & CEO.

Building on Jellatech’s latest developments, the company is now looking to raise funds to scale up the production and move towards commercialization. With the plethora of applications for Jellatech’s proteins, the company is also exploring partnerships, collaborations and strategic synergies to accelerate their path to providing reliable and sustainable collagen to the world.

Raleigh-based biotechnology company Jellatech announces a $3.5M oversubscribed Seed Round to enable scale-up of their cutting-edge protein manufacturing platform. Earlier this year the company announced the addition of bio-identical human collagen to their portfolio, in addition to their bovine and porcine collagen. This fundraise will propel Jellatech forward in its mission to commercialize animal-free proteins for applications in healthcare, personal care, biomedical research, and food & beverage.

“We are very excited to bring in new and existing investors, support and capital to realize the mission of our company. We have demonstrated the success of our first proteins and now it is time to scale it up and push our technology and capabilities even further” -Stephanie Michelsen, Founder & CEO

This Seed Round was led by Nordic-based byFounders, who share Jellatech’s vision for transforming multiple industries through innovative and planet-friendly solutions. Other participating investors included Milano Investment Partners, Joyful VC, Siddhi Capital, Blustein and more.

Jellatech’s technology unlocks a fundamentally new branch of the tech tree of our species: creating complex proteins from scratch, at scale, without having to ‘mine’ animal bodies. Jellatech sustainably and ethically produces large, complex proteins at scale starting with collagen. The impact that this can have is going to be enormous.” — Magnus Hambleton, Investor at byFounders 

Jellatech is leading the way in developing innovative, bio-identical animal proteins that are produced more sustainably, ethically and reliably. The company’s breakthrough technology has shown the potential of their first protein, collagen, to disrupt the global collagen market and significantly reduce the carbon footprint associated with traditional collagen production. Collagen is the first protein in Jellatech’s portfolio with more to come.

The funds from the Seed Round will be allocated towards advancing Jellatech’s research and development efforts, scaling up its cellular agriculture processes, expanding its world-class team of scientists and engineers, and accelerating the commercialization of its innovative proteins. Furthermore, Jellatech will establish key strategic partnerships to maximize its global reach and impact.

As the world faces pressing environmental challenges and growing concerns about the future of our planet, Jellatech stands tall as a beacon of hope, inspiring a positive change in the way we produce and consume food.

About Jellatech:

Jellatech is a biotechnology company developing a sustainable, scalable and reliable platform to produce complex proteins. By using cellular agriculture, Jellatech is able to create bio-identical proteins to supply various industries such as food & bev, materials, biomedicine, personal care and more, without relying on destructive animal agriculture. With a passionate team of scientists, engineers, and visionaries, Jellatech is committed to shaping a brighter and more sustainable future for the global protein production.

About byFounders: 

byFounders is the community-powered early-stage venture fund investing in companies with ties to the New Nordics. The fund is backed and supported by its unique Collective, consisting of some of the region’s most accomplished founders and operators. byFounders invests at pre-seed and seed stage and takes an impact-aware approach to investing and working with the broader startup ecosystem.