Novella, a startup nutrition technology company, is introducing technology to culture botanical ingredients with bioreactors, leaving whole-plant harvesting out of the equation. The novel platform circumvents the impact on climate change, and results in less room for supply chain disruptions, without interrupting plant life cycles.
 
“We don’t need the whole planet to get access to specific bioactive compounds,” said Kobi Avidan, CEO and co-founder of Novella. “It also isn’t necessary to discard up to 99% of a plant and incur tons of agricultural waste just to derive specific nutrients. We have the technology where we can narrow the harvest of an entire field for its plant essence in a single bioreactor.”
 
Cultivation is a lengthy and labor-intensive process involving sensitive plants, and vast stretches of agricultural land. Raw materials often have to be transferred overseas to a factory for extraction, before potential transfer to another factory for formulation into a finished product. Meanwhile, botanical extracts rely on natural growth cycles of plants, volatile environmental conditions, climate fluctuations, and other socioeconomic constraints.
 
Thinking Outside The Field
 
Rather than grow the whole plant, Novella screens specific plant tissues, such as stems, fruit, leaves, and flowers, to determine the highest concentrations of desired active compounds.
 
A cell culture is formed from these tissues and amplified in bioreactors. This results in a pure, pesticide-free product composed of whole-cell plant tissues with their naturally occurring complex of nutrients intact. The cultivation system eliminates the need for extraction by increasing the concentration of actives within the plant cells themselves, which are contained in a natural protective shell to prevent oxidation. This also assures full bioavailability.
 
“Growing nutrients outside the plant is actually a simpler process than growing meat cells outside of the cow,” said Avidan. “Moreover, we can now cultivate any ingredient close to the market of interest. This will be instrumental in lowering costs, as well as lightening their ecological footprint.”
 
The start-up will grow ingredients in a controlled, non-GMO environment, with precise regulation of stressors such as light and temperature conducive to specific bioactives at high potencies. The company has made headway in exploring certain vegetables such as kale to source some vitamins and antioxidants.
 
“Kale has captured the interest of the functional food, supplement, and pharma industries due to its long list of vitamins and minerals,” said Shimrit Bar-El, PhD, co-founder and CRO of Novella. “But it is very difficult to work with and process. We are specifically exploring the vegetable for its vitamin K and unique carotenoid composition.”
 
The company can grow any type of plant tissue, but is focusing on a few high-end botanicals, including some vegetables that boast potent concentrations of vitamin C which can’t be extracted through other existing methods.
 
“Consumers continue to demand products that are microbiologically safe, natural, and without chemical additives,” said Itay Dana, co-founder and BDO for Novella. “There is an increasing demand for natural botanicals, accompanied by incremental rises in prices resulting from a shortage of such products. By shifting the cultivation of popular micronutrients to the lab, the Novella platform can help free up extensive agricultural terrain for rededication to the growth of food crops while making high-value nutraceutical ingredients more readily available at affordable prices."