UPSIDE Foods announced a new range of consumer products made from animal cells. Pending regulatory review, these ground meat products will add to the company’s current offerings, which include chicken sausages, chicken sandwiches and dumplings. In addition, UPSIDE announced that it has developed a chicken cell line for use in suspension cell culture that could reduce the cost of production for these ground meat products. The company will initially be launching at a small scale with its chicken filet.

UPSIDE has also developed a chicken cell line that does not require platelet-derived growth factors (PDGF), ingredients used to support cell growth. 

According to Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of UPSIDE Foods. "Our first consumer product, a cultivated chicken filet, demonstrates our ability to deliver…a more complex and textured meat product.” He adds that the ground products allow the company to scale faster to make cultivated meat more accessible.

"Our breakthrough in developing a PDGF-independent cell line represents a major scientific achievement in the production of cultivated meat," says Kevin Kayser, senior vice president of research and development at UPSIDE Foods. "By eliminating the most expensive growth factor in our process, we're able to dramatically reduce cost and increase scale.”

UPSIDE's ground meat products will be made up of animal cells, along with other ingredients like herbs, vegetables, spices and plant-based proteins. The regulatory process for UPSIDE's ground products, which are based on cells grown in a suspension culture, will be separate from that of its first product, an adherent tissue-based process for which the company received a "green light" from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year. That product is currently undergoing review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for remaining approvals. Meanwhile, UPSIDE says it will continue working with both FDA and USDA.