The company’s AuraCell precision-cultivation platform enables the growth of bioactive botanical compounds directly from plant cells in a closed and controlled environment, delivers pure, high value, standardized phytonutrients with guaranteed consistency and zero waste, according to the company.
Plant cell technology is a means to create plant materials without growing plants in the ground. The plant cell cultivation technology starts by identifying the best plant cell lines—just like traditional plant breeding. These plant cells are propagated from real plants (similar to stem cells) and assessed throughout the cell cultivation process for important characteristics like bioactive potency, stability and purity.
“We believe that we are not competing against any existing industry like botanicals,” Martínez told NutraIngredients during a recent interview. “We can just offer brands and manufacturers a better alternative source to produce their existing goods without the bottlenecks of traditional agriculture systems.”
The foundations of Novella are built on a lot of knowledge from academia, said Martínez, combined with an experienced executive committee. “It’s not a very traditional start-up in that sense,” he said.
Martínez brings more than two decades of global leadership experience in the life sciences, health, and nutraceutical industries, particularly in probiotics and specialty ingredients. He previously held several senior leadership roles at ADM, including vice president of innovation and, prior to this, global commercial director for ADM’s health and wellness division.
The focus on a platform
Novella is invested in being a platform and not a single product or ingredient company, he told us, and almost any new ingredient could be ready for industrialization in 18 to 24 months.
“The company wants to be flexible in that regard,” he said, adding that Novella is open to partnerships.
Martínez is confident that plant cell culture offers an enormous opportunity to ease many of the pain points in the industry, from climate change and inflation to growing consumer demand for greater traceability, better quality, and reliability in the products they are purchasing.
Plant cell culture also delocalizes production, he said, with producers able to leverage existing assets in different regions of the world. This also helps to simplify logistics and avoid duties.
The company is not working on something novel or GMO, he added, noting that the focus is on compounds that are naturally present in plants.
“We are modulating the presence of certain bioactives in the cells, but the nature of the bioactives will be the same but more precise. That’s why we talk about ‘Precision Botanicals’.”
“Every batch will be the same and we are not relying on soil, climatology or other factors that force you to try to optimize the composition by extraction. If a company is investing very valuable resources in clinically substantiating a substance, then that substance should be exactly the same year after year.”
America first
Last year, Novella launched its first creation: Novella Strawberryꚙ, a uniquely potent whole-cell strawberry ingredient, which embodies the natural synergy of the berry’s compounds, including antioxidant phenolic acids, and others. The product is available for industrial validation and sampling.
“Novella Strawberryꚙ has more than enough potential for a company like us as the first product,” said Martínez. “It could also be a bolt-on for existing berry formulations because we will have something which is complementary.”
Novella Strawberryꚙ will roll out commercially in 2027, with the North American nutraceutical market the initial focus. The company is pursuing self-affirmed GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status with a “strong regulatory partner” in the U.S., he said. Other Novella whole-cell ingredients are also in the pipeline for release, according to the company.
To meet the projected commercial demands of tons of Novella Strawberryꚙ, Novella has integrated its proprietary technology into the production processes at Italian contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) Chemo Biosynthesis, Srl.
The company is also partnering with other CDMOs, including CPI (Centre for Process Innovation) and Extracellular Ltd., to enhance its upstream and downstream production processes.
Bioactives vs commodities
Casting his eyes at the wider plant cell culture landscape, Martínez questioned the approach of some companies to explore the potential of the technology for commodity-type ingredients.
“For commodities or macronutrients, that’s far away,” he said. “I don’t believe it will happen in the short term because the people demanding more sustainable goods are not demanding over-processed foods either.
“Does that take away the value for the technological approach? No, it doesn’t. It’s more on the execution and being able to make it actionable.
“On the other hand, it gets ultra obvious for bioactives that the experience of the consumer will not change, or if it changes it will be better because you will have more reliability on the sourcing of certain bioactives in terms of recurrency, lack of pesticides, lack of heavy metals, etcetera. It will be equal or better.”
