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LONDON - BSF Enterprise PLC (LSE:BSFA), a company specializing in tissue-engineered materials, announced a significant development in the production of sustainable luxury materials. Its subsidiary, Lab-Grown Leather Ltd (LGL), is advancing its lab-grown leather technology, with its latest innovation, Elemental X™, transitioning from lab-scale to future products.
In a groundbreaking move, LGL has partnered with creative agency VML, a group company of WPP (LON:WPP) PLC, and genomic engineering leader The Organoid Company to create the world’s first leather using the DNA of the extinct Tyrannosaurus rex. This collaboration aims to produce a high-quality, cruelty-free, and eco-friendly alternative to traditional leather.
The production process involves synthesizing T-Rex DNA from fossilized collagen and engineering cells that are integrated into LGL’s Elemental-X™ product stream. This "scaffold-free" approach allows cells to form their own natural structure, resulting in a material identical to traditional leather in terms of structure.
The T-Rex leather, which is fully biodegradable, is expected to offer the durability and repairability of traditional leather while reducing the environmental impacts of deforestation and pollution associated with conventional leather tanning processes.
Initial applications of the T-Rex leather will be in the luxury fashion accessories sector, with plans to extend into other industries such as automotive. The ambition is to produce a flagship luxury fashion item by the end of 2025, following which the companies intend to increase production.
Professor Che Connon of Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. emphasized the versatility of their advanced tissue engineering platform, while Thomas Mitchell, CEO of The Organoid Company, highlighted the project as a showcase of synthetic biology’s potential to create new materials inspired by ancient biology.
This initiative is part of a broader effort to explore how ancient biology can inspire future sustainable, high-performance materials. The partnership between VML, The Organoid Company, and Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. is poised to shape the future of luxury goods, prioritizing innovation and environmental responsibility.
The press release statement indicates that this venture is a pioneering step in the $47.9 billion bio-based materials market, which is growing annually by 10-15%. It represents an intersection of creative innovation and biotechnology, with the potential to transform the luxury materials industry into a more sustainable and ethical direction.
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