New Dawn Bio: Wood from the lab

How did you come up with the idea of making wood directly from wood cells, rather than from a tree?

“Why grow an entire organism when you only use a small part? It was something I found myself wondering about during my studies in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. It's kind of crazy to make rectangular planks from a round tree trunk. But since you cannot make the tree square, you just have to grow cells to make wood from. This is already happening in the development of cultured meat, cellular milk, and cheese. All we're doing is expanding this idea to the plant world.”

What problem are you solving with this technology?

“If we can make wood without growing trees, we can help prevent problematic deforestation and human rights violations. The idea is that we will soon be able to build materials with substances that we have complete control over. For example, if you add more vessel elements than fibres, the material becomes lighter. This means that we are fully in charge of the process, and we can make wood that is hard to come by, or that doesn't even exist in nature.”

So how do you turn single plant cells into a wooden product?

“It all starts with growing seedlings on gel. We extract specific cells from these seedlings, and grow these cells into a clump of tissue in a solution containing nutrients and growth hormones. We then let these cells differentiate into the same types of cells you find in wood, such as vessel elements and fibres. Finally, we use a new technique to glue the cells together into a certain shape. We already know a lot about these initial steps from research. Now we just have prove the last step, which we hope to do in the coming months.”

Where do you source the knowledge you need?

“For example from the development of cultured meat. The first Dutch company to develop cultured meat is in principle already able to produce on a large scale. It has taken them 10 years to get to this stage, but new companies are doing it much faster. We’re making a very different product, but we can also use the knowledge developed by these companies. The technology they use to build a particular structure are also relevant to us. And we are also looking at how they scale up to mass production.”

Do you also exchange knowledge with your neighbours?

“Our ‘neighbours’ in this laboratory are growing salmon cells. The lab itself belongs to Hudson River Biotechnology, experts in plant biology and genetics. We rent our facilities from them. We practically cannot even be closer together when it comes to exchanging knowledge. One floor down there is a company that produces culture medium. That is also interesting for us. And the building next door is home to the Wood Research Foundation, an organisation that issues advice on wood and has in-house knowledge of many different types of wood. We can definitely learn more about wood from them. It is no coincidence that we have chosen to settle in Wageningen, and specifically in this location. It's ideal for our work.”

Do you also work with the University?

“We have two advisors from WUR: plant cell biologist Tijs Ketelaar and cell physicist Bela Mulder. In the coming months, we plan to use a knowledge voucher from RVO for research projects in collaboration with WUR. In the slightly longer term, I can also see students from the study programme in Biology coming to us for projects and internships.”

What does the future look like?

“I think we will stay on Wageningen Campus for a long time. We are developing the technology here, and we plan to also set up a production facility. Ideally, we would want it to be not too far from here either. The next step is a licensing model for the method and materials. We will soon be able to produce anywhere in the world.”