A Singaporean milk technology company has opened a research and development headquarters in Woodland in connection with the University of California Davis.
TurtleTree Scientific is a 2019 startup that has patented technology to use mammalian cells to make milk in laboratory settings.
The company is enrolled in UC Davis' START program, which is a part of the university's Venture Catalyst effort to bring academic research to commercialization.
TurtleTree has raised $9.4 million from investors in the past two years, according to funding website Crunchbase.
Neither the company nor UC Davis officials could immediately be reached to comment.
TurtleTree has processes to make human milk in the lab for infant nutrition, and is working on ways to use bovine milk cells to produce real milk without the pollution, land use and potential for pathogens of dairy cows, according to its website.
Fengru Lin, CEO of TurtleTree, posted on her LinkedIn page that the UC Davis START program will allow the company access to “world class talent” in milk technology in the Sacramento region, centered by research and companies from UC Davis. On her LinkedIn page, Lin shows an aerial view of the office building at 1100 Main St. in Woodland as its new offices. That three-story building has many tenants.
START stands for Smart Toolkit for Accelerated Research Translation. TurtleTree took space in a Venture Catalyst office space in Woodland.
UC Davis is collaborating with companies including BASF SE, BCD Bioscience and Evolve BioSystems Inc. to research human milk and nutrition. Evolve BioSystems Inc. has received several rounds of investor funding.
