Okezue Bell — Cellular/Acellular Agriculture of Collagen (*and Elastin)

Cultured Collagen Creations by Geltor

…And its animal free

If you thought $18M in a Series A from biodesign company Geltor was a lot, try $91.3M for their Series B back in June, where they smashed their investment rounds.

Not even surprising to be honest. What Geltor is doing is pretty epic.

Based in San Leandro, California, Geltor is a company leveraging the tool of cellular agriculture to develop customized proteins without the animal.

[They] audaciously [imagine] and deeply [explore] all the possibilities that the tree of life has to offer. With customer benefit at the fore of each step of the creative process, Geltor has created the largest selection of designer proteins that are crafted with unparalleled biocompatibility and functionality. These proteins are 100% animal- and GMO-free, globally scalable, and sustainably cultivated. Geltor’s products are the result of endless curiosity and ceaseless optimization, clinically demonstrated for high performance.

If that’s not an aesthetic paragraph, then I don’t know what is 👆🏾

Because of their charisma, having gone through the leading biotechnology startup accelerator IndieBio, and making sustainable animal-free collagen products, founders Alex Lorestani and Nick Ouzounov have been able to lead their company to $116.3 M in funding, and Geltor is the 4th ever company of this biotech/alt. protein type to break $100 M in funding.

Awesome 🤩.

But what’s more interesting is what they actually do.

Collagen Conundrum

Collagen is important.

It affects almost all of the production industries in the world!

But if we look what it takes to make collagen, we find that it’s not really great for the animals that it’s being extracted from!

That’s collagen. Or topocollagen rather, but we’ll get to it in a second.

Collagen is a structural protein found inside of the extracellular matrix of the cell. That’s a lot of bolded words, huh? Let’s break them all down with a…