Articles

Cruelty-Free Cultivated Fur Development: The Challenge from Netherlands' Furoid™

2022.03.02

Furoid™ is a startup company based in the Netherlands specializing in research and development of fur production methods by applying technologies from Geneus Biotech. Applying the cell agriculture knowledge of Geneus Biotech, Furoid™ provides a cell-based replication method of animal fur without the animals. This time, we interviewed Furoid™ CEO Maria Zakurnaeva and Geneus Biotech's Chief Science Officer Sundararaghavan Pattabiraman (henceforth Sundar).

"Cultivated Fur"

Please tell us about the technology of Furoid™.

MariaFirst and foremost, it is important to understand the basic principle that hair is born from hair follicles. While it differs between cells and species, fundamentally, if cells can be differentiated to create hair follicles, they can also be used to create animal hair follicles.

SundarThe process involves first collecting stem cells from animals that produce fur similar to mink. Under specific conditions, hair follicles form, and small cell clusters emerge from these follicles. As cultivation progresses, hair fibers or even pelts emerge from these clusters of about 1,000 cells each. We plan to make this usable in a lab environment.

This article is for members only.
Please register to read the rest of the article.

Create an account (Free)Login to your account

What you can do with a membership