An excerpt from Arvind Gupta’s “Five Insights from investing in Prolific Machines“:

The heart of Prolific Machines’ approach to reinventing the assembly line for food is rooted in identifying the most expensive drivers of cell culture. Cost analysis shows that by weight, growth factors are by far the most expensive part of growing food – or anything really – in culture. So Deniz and his team had devised a novel way to eliminate the need for these growth factors in mammalian cell culture. What that means is it would theoretically enable cells to grow at the cost of electricity and basic nutrients like sugar.

There are many approaches to make growth factors cheaper. But none that I know of to eliminate their need in culture altogether. That is what Prolific was proposing to do (exactly how will be revealed after the final bricks in their patent wall are placed). But if eliminating growth factors is possible, the impact on humanity would be enormous.