Reel Foods: Cultivated fillets of fish for healthier people and planet

Reel Foods leverages cardiac tissue engineering methods developed at the Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS to generate cultivated fish fillets that are indistinguishable from wild-caught seafood.

The Problem

The global demand for seafood is estimated to double by 2050, but our oceans are tapped out; 94% of wild stocks are currently fished at or beyond capacity. Aquaculture has developed to fill this gap, but still fails to replicate the diversity and quality of wild populations. Today, globally, we consume more farmed fish than wild-caught, but this production is largely restricted to a few species, such as salmon and tilapia. The most sought-after fish – such as bluefin tuna, halibut, and Chilean seabass – have strict catch limits, a finite supply, and no farmable alternatives. In addition, there is increasing awareness that this dwindling supply is making us sick. Microplastics, mercury, and “forever chemicals” such as PFAS can accumulate in the tissues of both wild and farm-raised fish, and contaminate our own bodies when we eat them.

Our Solution

Reel Foods is solving this problem by using a novel biomanufacturing method originally developed at the Wyss Institute and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to create certified-clean fillets of seafood that are compositionally identical to wild-caught fish. Their species-agnostic technology creates higher quality lab-grown meat at lower costs compared to existing approaches.

Product Journey

John Ahrens and Robert Weeks met as graduate students working in the lab of Wyss Core Faculty member Jennifer Lewis – Ahrens on the “biology side” of the lab, and Weeks on the “materials side.” Ahrens’ first project was to help develop a novel 3D bioprinting method called SWIFT that patterns vasculature, or the biological plumbing, within densely cellular, thick tissues. The team identified that when thick tissues lacked vasculature, nearly all the cells beyond a thin outer shell died due to lack of oxygen. When cutting into this tissue, these dead cells oozed out like the filling of a tapioca pearl. The addition of 3D-bioprinted channels maintained cellular viability, resulting in structured tissue with elasticity, firmness, and a “texture” like a cooked carrot. While other members of the lab continued to functionalize the vasculature to support human organ transplantation, Ahrens realized that the vascular platform was mature enough to use for cultivated meat, as heart tissue is primarily made of muscle, like most cuts of meat. He reached out to Weeks to lead the platform’s evolution from a benchtop method into a scalable manufacturing process capable of generating the metric tonnes of product required for the food industry.

Despite recent buzz and investment, the cultivated meat industry has encountered setbacks, in large part because the cost of growing animal muscle cells suspended in bioreactors is extremely high and the yields very low. As a result, the first wave of cultivated meat products are “hybrid,” containing mostly plant-based materials with a small proportion of animal cells mixed in. With their ability to pattern vasculature, Ahrens and Weeks are building solutions to address these cost and quality problems. The team’s vascular reactor enables a bioinspired approach to scaling cellular material in a closed and automated production process. Encapsulated within a three-dimensional matrix and perfused with culture media through the vasculature, muscle cells can proliferate, grow, and mature quickly. This not only drives down cost, but also enables the cells to naturally drive taste and texture without relying upon plant-based scaffolding and processed additives.

Ahrens and Weeks decided to focus on growing fish tissues using their new method, recognizing that it was the ideal first market. First, there is an urgent need to reduce pressure on wild fisheries. This large gap in supply and demand also creates a high, stable price point. Second, fish cells can be grown at lower cost due to their ability to be cultured at lower temperature and without CO2 supplementation. Finally, in addition to an environmental benefit, cultivated seafood has a true consumer pull, providing a certified clean product free from the many toxins that are found in seafood today.

Impact

Bolstered by their results in the Lewis lab, Ahrens and Weeks developed the initial seeds of their company through classes at the Harvard Business School and further developed their technology over a summer at Harvard’s Pagliuca Life Lab. Their company, Reel Foods, was launched in late 2022 to bring cultivated seafood to market. Ahrens and Weeks were named to the Wyss Lumineers Class of 2023. Since it launched, the company has patented their novel vascularization method, developed a critical white fish prototype, and is developing their first commercial product – a bluefin tuna saku block. Reel Foods raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round and is gearing up to launch their seed round of funding in early 2025.