Israeli molecular farming startup PoLoPo has announced the successful completion of a $1.75 million pre-seed funding round to continue development of its proprietary technology, which uses potato as a plant biofactory to produce animal protein.
“We want to produce better food for the world”
PoLoPo will start extracting the key protein in egg white, ovalbumin, by growing it in potato tubers and creating an egg white substitute for the food industry. According to the startup, its proteins will be similar to ovalbumin in terms of functionality, nutritional value and protein sequence.
FoodLab led the pre-seed round; Other investors include CPT Capital, Siddhi Capital, Plug & Play Ventures, Milk & Honey Ventures and HackCapital.
Protein in potatoes
A founder of PoLoPo. Maya Sapir-Mir said, “We are delighted to have won such a distinguished and like-minded group of investors. “With this substantial funding, we aim to reach several significant milestones, including protein-enriched potato tubers and ovalbumin functional samples.”
Sapir-Mir and his co-founder Dr. Raya Lieberman-Aloni is a plant metabolic engineer and expert in expressing and targeting functional proteins in plants. Using directed metabolic engineering techniques, they developed a proprietary technology that can produce “real” animal protein in potato tubers in a scalable, cost-effective way.
“We were very impressed by the disruptive potential of their platform technology and, most importantly, the deep plant science expertise of PoLoPo’s founders and their bold vision for the company,” said FoodLabs VC Christian Guba.
With the newly raised funds, PoLoPo will expand its core team of world-class scientists and accelerate its R&D efforts, projected to deliver an egg replacer prototype within the next 18 months.
Plant bio-factories
The potato is one of the most widely grown non-cereal food crops in the world; They are plentiful, resilient, and cheap. In addition, potatoes contain mostly water and starch, which provides plenty of room for protein synthesis. They could become a plant biofactory for the high-scale production of animal-derived functional proteins, says PoLoPo.
“We want to produce better food for the world. Molecular farming technology, being used to produce high-quality protein, presents a huge opportunity to do this while taking animals out of the equation and reducing the carbon footprint of the production process,” said Dr Raya Lieberman-Aloni.
In July 2022, PoLoPo won the FoodTech Track of the Cola Startup Competition, securing its first investment from CPT Capital. In October, the company was named the startup with the most impactful potential at the FoodHack Demo Day.