Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast · Alex Shirazi

Chris Landowski of Onego Bio

·39 min·2 clips

Onego Bio is developing animal-free bioalbumin that is bio-identical to chicken ovalbumin.

1. Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast features Chris Landowski of Onego Bio talking about animal-free egg white protein and precision fermentation. 2. Chris Landowski is Onego Bio's co-founder and chief technical officer, and Alex hosts the Future Food Show interview. 3. The episode asks how Onego Bio can make egg white proteins at scale, with lower footprint, and with enough production capacity for food manufacturers. 4. Chris says he has lived in Helsinki, Finland for about 15 years after growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 5. He describes studying molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a PhD in pharmaceutical science at the University of Michigan, and doing postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and in Bern, Switzerland. 6. Chris explains that he moved to VTT, Technical Research Center of Finland, to work in industrial biotechnology and applied research. 7. He says VTT is a large government research center in Europe that works on forestry, electronics, shipbuilding, and industrial biotechnology. 8. Chris gives examples of VTT work, including yeast strains for biofuels and a production system for a COVID-19 vaccine that entered clinical trials. 9. Onego Bio is described as a VTT spinoff founded in 2022 to produce animal-free ingredients with precision fermentation. 10. Chris says Onego Bio's first product is bioalbumin, a chicken egg white protein that is bio-identical to ovalbumin. 11. He says the product has the same taste, texture, functionality, and complete amino-acid profile as chicken egg white. 12. He says the process uses a microbe in a bioreactor, sugar as the feedstock, filtration to remove cells, and drying to make powder. 13. Chris says the company aims to lower CO2 emissions, land use, and other environmental impacts compared with conventional egg production. 14. He says egg white shortages linked to bird flu show why an animal-independent source of the protein matters. 15. He argues that egg white is hard to replace with plant-based ingredients because of its functional properties in food manufacturing. 16. Chris says precision fermentation is not new and compares it to brewing, cheese enzymes, vanilla extracts, colors, and juice clarification. 17. He emphasizes that the technology has been used for about 50 years and already operates under FDA and EFSA standards. 18. The interview style is technical and practical, with Alex asking about pronunciation, booth demos, scaling, and commercial strategy. 19. Listeners interested in precision fermentation, biomanufacturing, and alternative proteins would get the most value from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a short consumer-food trend overview without process details may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear look at why egg white is still difficult to replace, even with precision fermentation.

The episode follows Chris Landowski as he explains OnegoBio's work on animal-free egg white protein through precision fermentation. It is strongest when it shows why egg white is so hard to replace with plant-based ingredients, since its functional qualities are difficult to…

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