Mycofeast acquires Daisy Lab to develop fermented lactoferrin

Mycofeast has acquired New Zealand precision fermentation developer Daisy Lab, adding a dairy protein development platform and an established scientific team to the Oxford-based biotechnology group. The transaction brings Daisy Lab’s bovine lactoferrin programme into a business with fermentation research operations in California and industrial manufacturing capabilities in Europe. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

Daisy Lab, based in Auckland, develops dairy-identical proteins using precision fermentation. Its most advanced programme concerns bovine lactoferrin, a protein conventionally recovered from milk. The company has installed a 500-litre fermenter and is working to transfer its production and downstream processing methods from laboratory equipment into the larger pilot system.

The acquisition will retain Daisy Lab’s New Zealand operations and bring its founders into roles across the wider Mycofeast group. Irina Miller, Daisy Lab’s co-founder and chief executive, has confirmed that no redundancies are associated with the transaction. The scientific team will continue developing lactoferrin in collaboration with Evolutia Bio, Mycofeast’s California research subsidiary.

The two businesses had been exploring a commercial relationship before acquisition discussions developed. Daisy Lab had worked with Mycofeast as a potential partner and customer, allowing the companies to assess their respective technical capabilities. The subsequent acquisition provides access to a larger industrial and commercial platform without requiring Daisy Lab to establish every part of that infrastructure independently.

Lactoferrin is an iron-binding glycoprotein found in milk and bovine colostrum. It is used in specialist nutritional formulations, where relatively small quantities of a purified ingredient can have substantial commercial value. Conventional production involves recovering lactoferrin from dairy streams, making availability dependent on the concentration of the protein in the raw material and the efficiency of separation and purification.

Precision fermentation uses a different production route. A microorganism is engineered to express the target protein and cultivated in a controlled fermentation process. Nutrient supply, temperature, pH, aeration and other operating conditions influence the performance of the production organism and the amount of protein generated.

The desired material must then be separated from the fermentation broth and purified to meet its intended specification. Recovery operations may involve filtration and other separation techniques, depending on the production organism, the location of the expressed protein and the characteristics of the finished ingredient. These stages can contribute substantially to manufacturing cost and determine how much usable protein is obtained from a fermentation batch.

Daisy Lab has developed yeast-based production systems and previously reported bovine lactoferrin yields of several grams per litre under its development conditions. Those results demonstrate progress in biological production, but they do not establish a sustained commercial output rate. Results obtained in smaller vessels must be reproduced at the intended manufacturing scale before the process can be considered industrially validated.

The 500-litre installation is therefore an important intermediate stage. A larger vessel changes the relationship between mixing, oxygen transfer, heat removal and the conditions experienced by the microorganisms. These differences can affect productivity even when a process uses the same organism and broadly similar operating parameters.

Downstream processing also becomes more demanding as fermentation volumes increase. A process that efficiently recovers protein from laboratory batches may require different equipment configurations and operating conditions when handling larger amounts of fermentation material. Product losses during separation, purification and concentration can influence the economics as much as the amount of protein generated in the fermenter.

Mycofeast’s manufacturing network includes a former Heineken brewery in Poland that the company is repurposing for industrial biotechnology. The site provides an established industrial infrastructure alongside new equipment and production arrangements. Its suitability for Daisy Lab’s lactoferrin process will depend on the requirements of the production organism, fermentation conditions, purification system and intended food ingredient specification.

Existing industrial vessels and utilities can provide a foundation for fermentation manufacturing, but equipment originally designed for brewing does not automatically meet the needs of every recombinant protein process. Cleaning arrangements, contamination controls, instrumentation, process separation and downstream recovery must be appropriate to the product being manufactured.

Evolutia Bio adds strain engineering and biological development capabilities to the integration programme. Improvements in expression systems may increase the amount of target protein produced or improve consistency between batches. Such gains still have to be evaluated alongside fermentation duration, raw material consumption, recovery efficiency and the operating cost of the complete process.

Mycofeast’s wider capabilities include functional ingredients and other biologically produced compounds, allowing Daisy Lab’s dairy protein work to sit alongside existing strain development and industrial fermentation activities. The company has described the acquisition as a way to connect research, process engineering and manufacturing resources more directly.

The group intends to undertake further lactoferrin scale-up and optimisation, prepare regulatory submissions, conduct customer trials and work towards transferring the process into Mycofeast’s manufacturing operation over the next 12 months. These activities are planned development steps, not completed transfers or evidence that commercial-scale lactoferrin production has already begun.

Regulatory authorisation will also influence the commercial pathway. Precision-fermented food ingredients can require evidence concerning the production organism, manufacturing method, purity, composition, residual substances, intended uses and safety. Requirements differ between markets, and an ingredient’s suitability for use in food cannot be established solely through proof that the target protein has been produced successfully.

Product qualification adds a further stage after process development. Potential customers will need to assess whether the recovered lactoferrin meets the required identity, purity, consistency and functional specification for their formulations. Commercial supply arrangements will depend on the ability to reproduce that quality reliably across manufacturing batches.

Mycofeast now controls a specialist dairy protein development platform with an installed pilot fermenter and a team experienced in strain engineering, fermentation and recovery. The next measurable milestones will be repeatable production at larger scale, successful process transfer, completion of relevant regulatory work and customer qualification. The acquisition expands the group’s capabilities immediately, while the resulting commercial manufacturing output remains to be demonstrated.