Waterloo Pharmacy grad student wins $10K GreenHouse Social Impact Fund Prize
Nicholas Cheng (MSc in Pharmacy in progress) won the Winter 2023 Social Impact Fund Grand Prize for his project Entomatia, which uses food waste as feed for mealworms to extract a serum to replace fetal bovine serum (FBS).
The $10,000 prize from the GreenHouse Social Impact Fund will be used for infrastructure costs and to generate a prototype serum for further scale-up.
L-r: Dr. Richard Myers, principal of United College, Nicholas Cheng and Tania Del Matto, GreenHouse director.
A sustainable alternative to FBS
Cheng was sharing a car ride with some friends discussing potential research ideas when a conversation about FBS began.
FBS is extracted from the blood of cow fetuses and is used by researchers from a variety of disciplines to propagate cell growth. The costly process is not vegan-friendly or slaughter-free with many animal rights concerns.
“We started talking about bug-based food sources for the growing population and wondered if we could make an alternative to FBS that we haven’t thought of previously,” Cheng says.
Current alternatives including yeast, plant and bacteria-derived solutions have their own additional complications, and Cheng wanted to create an alternative that was not only less costly, but environmentally sustainable and ethical.
Entomatia’s process is a fraction of the cost of developing FBS, no mammals are harmed in manufacturing, it is sustainable by using cyclical harvesting and is also infinitely scalable.
“People have had adverse reactions to the concept and how it’s grown from ‘bug juice.’ But when you think about it, it’s almost the same as a cow eating grass and consuming the bugs in that grass from which FBS is derived. It’s the cow that eats the bugs, not you,” Cheng says.
The use of consumables in laboratories across disciplines is an expensive portion of research funding. Cheng’s hope is to support researchers who struggle with obtaining the growth serum.
“Making consumables cheaper and more accessible will help researchers direct grant money elsewhere, allowing them to achieve more,” Cheng says.
Using food waste makes this process even cheaper. Typically, it is free to obtain, and some places even pay for you to remove the waste. The food is then treated to make sure it is good for bug consumption.
Growing bugs, a group effort
Entomatia’s next step is to purchase the infrastructure required to scale up the mealworms outside of his father’s home, as the bugs are housed in vertical trays.
“My dad has helped maintain the colony while I’ve been busy with my thesis proposal. He treats them quite well and I’m grateful to have familial support,” Cheng says.
The grounds team on the University of Waterloo’s main campus will determine where Entomatia can house the mealworms. The construct will be modular so it can be taken down easily, and placed in a less trafficked area.
An added level of safety is important to this project to ensure no accidental release of the insects occurs, although mealworms do not get very far.
“Seeing our name on screen when the winner was announced and being called up was an overwhelming experience. This prize symbolizes trust given and pushes us to do more with Entomatia,” Cheng says.
Nicholas expressed his appreciation for the generous donors of United College and his additional Entomatia team members: Wafeeq Alam, Darshan Das, Shreeja Gupta, Brenda Li and Ariana Lim, who contributed their time between co-op work terms. He also expressed gratitude to Krysta Traianovski, science lab manager at Velocity.
