Startup firm creating functional protein ingredients from bovine colostrum raises seed funding

Photo from Maolac

Israeli foodtech startup Maolac says it recently raised $3.2 million in seed funding to create functional protein ingredients from bovine colostrum. The company will use the money to build a production facility.

The company uses “computational biology” to “identify and extract functional proteins from bovine colostrum,” which the company says is 95% equivalent to the nutrient-rich colostrum in human breast milk. The company is using bovine colostrum to create superfood products to benefit athletes, the elderly, and even pets. Its first product line is an anti-inflammatory product for humans.

“Initially, this [product line] will target athletes to help reduce muscle strain and improve recovery time,” explains a company press release. “The product line will also target the elderly, to support active living and improved mobility. It will form the basis for the next generation of gut health solutions for humans and pets to help prevent severe cases of gut inflammation.”

It explains: “Maolac’s technology relies on a bio-convergence platform for the discovery of proteins, based on proprietary machine learning and natural language processing search algorithms. Maolac has identified more than 1,500 known bioactive proteins in human breast milk. It discovered that bovine colostrum has over 400 homolog proteins with more than a 95% bio-similarity to human breast milk, which can be extracted. Maolac creates thousands of high-impact human functional milk protein mixtures, tailormade for various immune-boosting applications.”

The company sources its bovine colostrum from dairies where the colostrum is otherwise discarded.

In the press release, company CEO and cofounder Maya Ashkenazi-Otmazgin said, “The new investment will help Maolac disrupt the global immune-boosting market. The facility we’ll be able to build will help introduce our human functional milk proteins into new segments and enable the product to target a variety of food products for daily consumption.”