Any startup is having a look to unravel an issue. Once in a while, it’s not the only you first envisioned whilst you arrange the corporate, as Mari-Ann Meigo Fonseca, co-founder of Tallin-based Gelatex can attest.
Gelatex manufactures 3-D nanofibrous scaffolds for more than a few packages, starting from cellular tradition to tissue engineering.
“However we began the corporate with an absolutely other industry concept in thoughts,” Meigo Fonseca tells TNW.
Preliminary goal: the textile trade
Construction an organization is frequently much less about sticking to an preliminary, inflexible plan and extra about embracing and adapting to adjustments alongside the way in which.
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With a background within the textile trade and garment generation, Meigo Fonseca was once first of all in the hunt for to give a contribution to the sustainability of the rage sector — a challenge that led her to pursue an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Generation Control on the College of Tartu in 2015.
There she met her co-founder, fabrics scientist and engineer Märt-Erik Martens.
In 2016, the duo participated within the ClimateLaunchpad festival and gained with their concept of manufacturing leather-like textile the usage of gelatin nanofibres. They based Gelatex the similar yr and persevered growing the product.
“One of the vital first demanding situations we had was once that, even supposing lets make the fabric paintings, we wouldn’t be capable to manufacture it at scale with the present manufacturing applied sciences,” Meigo Fonseca says.
“It might simply be too expensive.”
The beginning of HaloSpin
The duo made up our minds to unravel the issue themselves, and in 2017, Martens evolved a brand new nanofibre manufacturing generation he dubbed “HaloSpin.”
Halospinning works by means of spinning (or drawing) nanofibres from liquid polymer answers with out the usage of electrostatic forces.
It’s quicker than typical possible choices reminiscent of electrospinning, and will building up manufacturing capability by means of 100 occasions, Gelatex says. This interprets to price financial savings of as much as 90%.
“The largest business unit of electrospinning can price about €8 million and will produce about 360 grams of nanofibers in line with hour,” Meigo Fonseca says.
“With our pilot device we will be able to produce 2.2kg in line with hour, and we’re already construction a device [with a capacity] of 5kg in line with hour.”
Some other benefit of the process are the original morphology houses it delivers. This ends up in extremely porous 3-D scaffolds that may be customised to other fabrics and packages.
Pivoting to the scientific sector and cultured meat
Because of halospinning, the startup moved in opposition to the primary product-market are compatible with a number of world firms.
However whilst there was once passion, the corporate by no means were given to the level the place it will if truth be told promote the product.
“The COVID pandemic in 2020 was once the beginning of a pivot for us,” she says. That’s when Gelatex started the usage of its generation to mass-produce nanofibre filtering subject matter for face mask.
The method enabled the founders to understand the overall attainable of nanofibres and determine the desire for scalable manufacturing in cellular tradition.
From the similar yr onwards, Gelatex moved clear of the textile trade and pivoted to generating nanofibrous fabrics for cultured meat in addition to 3-D cellular tradition and tissue engineering for the scientific and pharma sector.
“Lengthy-term, the most important marketplace for us is cultured meat manufacturing,” Meigo Fonsenca says. However given the sphere’s regulatory demanding situations and the huge investments wanted for such firms to scale, within the subsequent 5 years, Gelatex will likely be specializing in the scientific sector.
Programs vary from stem cellular analysis and toxicology research to drug discovery in 3-D tissue fashions.
Consistent with Meigo Fonseca, the adventure from science to entrepreneurship isn’t a very simple one. One piece of recommendation she has for founding groups is for the individuals to counterpoint every different, combining each the medical and the industry background.
