Cell4Food partners with Algocell to advance scalable cellular aquaculture

Lisbon-based Cell4Food partnered with bioprocess modeling company Algocell in a strategic collaboration aimed at building the technological foundation for scalable cellular aquaculture, as companies in the sector continued efforts to reduce development time and risk on the path to commercial production.

• Cell4Food and Algocell announced a strategic collaboration integrating cellular aquaculture and AI-powered bioprocess modeling to accelerate process development and optimization.

• The partnership combined Cell4Food’s BlueCell cell cultivation platform with Algocell’s digital twin technology to reduce physical experimentation and de-risk scale-up.

• Company executives said the collaboration aimed to shorten development timelines, improve process predictability, and support scalable cell-based seafood production.

The collaboration integrated Cell4Food’s BlueCell cell cultivation technology stack with Algocell’s AI-powered bioprocess modeling platform, Algocell P. BlueCell covered the development of animal cells from fish, molluscs, and crustaceans through to final food products, while Algocell’s platform focused on modeling and optimizing complex biological processes.

The companies said the partnership was designed to accelerate Cell4Food’s process development by shifting significant portions of experimentation from physical laboratories to computational environments. The approach aimed to reduce the cost and time traditionally associated with developing precise and scalable cell cultivation processes.

Cell4Food focused on cellular aquaculture as a means of producing seafood components efficiently and consistently, with the stated goal of reducing environmental impact while supporting long-term food security. Achieving that goal required highly controlled biological processes, which have historically depended on extensive trial-and-error experimentation.

By integrating Algocell’s digital twin technology, the partners aimed to model and optimize a full cell cultivation process, combining biological dynamics with operational parameters to design an optimal production framework. The collaboration focused on refining media compositions, feeding strategies, and gas regimes, while identifying biological and operational constraints that limit efficiency and yield.

Algocell’s platform generated digital twins that combined mechanistic biological models with machine learning, allowing thousands of process scenarios to be simulated in silico. According to the companies, this capability made it possible to explore a wide range of process configurations without relying solely on physical experiments.

The collaboration set out several objectives tied to process development efficiency. These included reducing trial-and-error experimentation by shifting development work to computational modeling, accelerating development cycles by building validated models from limited experimental data, and improving the predictability of scale-up by identifying pathways to higher cell densities and titers.

Cell4Food CEO Vitor Verdelho Vieira described the collaboration as a way to bridge the gap between early-stage innovation and commercial reality. “Our vision at Cell4Food was to create the infrastructure that allows sustainable food technologies to move from concept to reality. Building a sustainable new product line required the right collaborations and access to technologies that were once out of reach,” Vieira said.

Algocell CEO Omri Schanin, who is a speaker at The Future of Protein Production Chicago on 24/25 February 2026, said robust modeling was essential to overcoming the technical and financial risks associated with scaling bioprocesses. “At Algocell, we believed that successfully navigating the valley of death required a foundation of robust and precise modeling. This infrastructure significantly reduced risk and enabled levels of process performance and scale that would be difficult to achieve through physical experimentation alone,” Schanin said.

The partnership came as cellular aquaculture companies increasingly focused on improving process efficiency and predictability as key challenges to commercialization. Scale-up in cell culture systems has remained capital intensive, with uncertainties around yield, consistency, and cost presenting barriers to wider adoption.

Cell4Food was founded in 2022 and developed cellular aquaculture technologies aimed at producing cell-based foods derived from fish, molluscs, and crustaceans. The company operated a distributed network of blue biotechnology laboratories across Portugal and collaborated with research centers and industry partners focused on diversifying global food production.

Algocell developed an AI-powered bioprocess modeling platform designed to address challenges associated with complex biomanufacturing systems. The company’s technology aimed to condense months or years of physical experimentation into rapid computational simulations, supporting faster development timelines and more predictable outcomes in both cell culture and precision fermentation.

Through the collaboration, the companies aimed to combine biological expertise with advanced modeling to create a more efficient pathway from laboratory development to commercial-scale production. While no timeline for commercialization was disclosed, both companies framed the partnership as a foundational step toward scalable cellular aquaculture systems.