Optimized Foods’ mycelium-based tech shapes future of cultivated meat and nutrition
Cultivated meat is gaining momentum as a sustainable animal protein, but scalability and affordability are key challenges to advancing the sector. Optimized Foods, a start-up co-founded by Dr. Minami Ogawa, uses a microcarrier system based on mycelium — the root structures of mushrooms — to improve novel products, such as cultivated meat, beauty, and gut health solutions.
Nutrition Insight meets with Ogawa, who is also a scientific adviser at the company, to discuss her journey and vision for sustainable food innovation.
She developed the patented MycoCarrier technology during her Ph.D. in Food Science at the University of California (UC) Davis, US, to advance the growth of animal cells in cultivated meat. This technology uses mycelium as micro-carriers to encapsulate food and agricultural byproducts into nutritious, sustainable, and high-value products.
“One of the great things about this technology we’ve developed is there’s so many applications to it,” says Ogawa. “We get to develop it for different purposes, not just food but for beauty and gut health.”
With a background in Viticulture and Oenology — the science of grapes and wine — at UC Davis, she switched to cultivated meat technology for her Ph.D.
Studying under Dr. David Block, the principal investigator for UC Davis’ National Science Foundation grant in cultivated meat, Ogawa leveraged her knowledge of wine production to create more sustainable food products.
Transforming cultivated meat production
During her undergraduate program, Ogawa also researched cultivated meat, producing meat, muscle, and fat cells into an edible product.
“I started to think about what would help this technology become even more scalable and affordable. Those are two of the bottlenecks we have in getting cultivated meat more commercially available.”
Ogawa explains that most animal cells are anchorage-dependent, meaning they “need something to attach to grow and multiply,” such as skin and muscle cells supported by bone structures and proteins.
She explains that to recreate that structure in cultivated meat, cells that can become muscle and have nutritional benefits similar to conventional meat are required. They need to contain all the amino acids found in proteins that make up a healthy diet.
“When I found out that you need the support to replicate this biological system, I thought about my wine research,” she says.
Dr. Minami Ogawa, co-founder and scientific adviser at Optimized Foods.Wine to meat tech
In wine biochemistry, Ogawa developed a support structure for attaching yeasts to speed up fermentation and help yeast retention so it can more easily be recovered, leading to more efficient and cost-effective production. She hypothesized that this technology could also benefit cultivated meat research.
“My Ph.D. thesis was to develop this edible structural support, which is made of a mycelium root structure to create micro-carriers.”
Ogawa says these micro-carriers are small supports that can remain suspended in this bioreactor growth culture system to support animal cell growth.
“My principal investigator recommended that we try to file a patent on it. We went through the Office of Research, the university’s division that helps patent and intellectual property work, and filed intellectual property.”
Optimized Foods start-up
After filing her patent, Ogawa was approached by a group working on mycelium as an alternative food source. Together, they created the start-up Optimized Foods.
“We are a group of eight researchers, scientific and non-scientific, working on creating and leveraging mycelium as an alternative food source for various applications. This spans not just cultivated meat but also nutrient delivery and cosmetics.”
For example, companies have contacted Optimized Foods to determine if it can encapsulate lipoproteins or chemicals to retain them and optimize chemical activity during application.
“In gut health as well, you can encapsulate some polyphenol compounds that can reach your gut area where it needs the most help and not just dissolve in your stomach acid,” Ogawa adds.
Scientific nutrition advancements
Born in Japan but raised in the US, Ogawa says she was interested in food from a young age. She distinguishes food as a cultural center and form of identity. She welcomes innovations in the food industry and calls for an increased acceptance of new ingredients beyond the mainstream and staple plant varieties currently used.
“This happens with yeast as well. We only use one species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a baker’s yeast. It’s phenomenal at making bread and wine, but there are many more yeasts out there that can produce so many beneficial compounds.”
“We need to be able to expand our acceptance toward things that we don’t traditionally use as food, medicine, or beauty and start applying them,” she urges.
Mycelium is a root-like structure of a mushroom, which has also been researched as an alternative protein source.At the same time, Ogawa highlights that making sense of rapid scientific advancements is crucial, as is translating those innovations into communication to investors or a non-scientific audience to explain why a new product is essential and why they should invest in it.
“I’ve learned that customers want better nutrition and taste in their product but do not necessarily want to either know or talk about the production in a dystopian way. Food is something that you consume, and it nourishes your body. They don’t want something artificially complex they can’t understand, such as biochemistry words or produced with biotech.”
Mycelium-based food development
Optimized Foods’ MycoCarrier technology is a hybrid product, explains Ogawa. The mycelium-based “scaffolding material” eventually becomes part of the cultivated meat product.
Combining plant- and fungal-derived components with animal-based compounds can yield various benefits. “Each has its good and bad qualities. It’s also up to us scientists and product development researchers to choose production methods that pick the positive component from eventually becoming that major product.”
For example, this combination adds fibers. “Mycelium is made of fibers that humans can’t digest but are still edible. They’re prebiotics, and thus will also improve your nutrition,” says Ogawa.
Though Optimized Foods doesn’t sell products directly to consumers, Ogawa teases that the company is “very close” to launching products through partnerships with larger consumer packaged goods companies.
“One of them is our branded product called HYphat, a fat encapsulation product. It aims to be a better version of alternative fats for plant-based burgers.”
She explains that coconut flakes are a typical fat used. Still, the oils’ lower melting point means they evaporate during cooking, losing their impact on flavor and texture in a final product.
“To prevent and mitigate some of this fat release, we encapsulate it into our mycelium scaffolding, which helps retain the fat during the cooking process to get a juicier, richer flavor of the product.”
Ogawa says the company also developed a cultivated caviar product, “making caviar eggs from a sturgeon fish without killing sturgeon fish.”
