Medium Well Technological Solutions

**Product and the concrete problem it solves.** Medium Well is addressing the downstream-processing bottleneck that often determines whether a novel protein ever becomes an affordable food ingredient. Precision-fermentation, plant-protein, cultivated-food, dairy, and enzyme producers can make a target molecule but still need to separate it from a complex broth or side stream. Conventional affinity resins, membranes, chromatography, and multi-stage filtration can be expensive, chemically intensive, and difficult to scale at food-industry margins. Medium Well's BioResin is presented as a bio-based separation medium made from agricultural byproducts, with a second product concept, BioResin Core, that captures proteins from acid whey, pea, soy, and related streams into a fiber-protein ingredient. The company therefore attacks two linked costs: purification of a desired molecule and disposal or underuse of a protein-rich waste stream. Its official site describes BioResin Pure as a reusable bind-and-release processing aid capable of more than 90% purity, while BioResin Core is described as an edible magnetic fiber that can become a protein-enriched prebiotic ingredient. These are company-reported product specifications, not independently audited performance claims, but they define a concrete wedge into the economics of sustainable protein production.

**Core technology and how it works.** Medium Well's technical approach adapts selective molecular binding principles associated with affinity chromatography to natural plant-based matrices. The company says its process tunes a material to separate target molecules according to size, charge, structure, and other client specifications, using natural, generally recognized as safe, non-GMO substances that can be adjusted and reused as separation media. In the BioResin Core route, plant byproducts such as apple pomace are converted into a functional fiber scaffold; when mixed with a protein-bearing side stream, the material binds and concentrates proteins while leaving a fiber-protein hybrid that can be formulated into food. BioResin Pure is the higher-purity route: the medium is intended to bind a target during processing, then release it for recovery and reuse. The company's stated advantage is single-step selectivity in a food-compatible process rather than a costly sequence of pharmaceutical-grade operations. A 2026 technical-validation brief reports repeatable binding capacity and purity in a relevant environment, a TRL 6 classification, and integration with existing downstream-processing infrastructure. The difficult engineering questions remain open: binding capacity after repeated cycles, selectivity in variable waste streams, contamination and allergen control, regeneration chemistry, flow-through scale, and whether a material that works in a laboratory or pilot remains economical in a commercial plant.

**Market, customers, and go-to-market.** Medium Well sells an enabling ingredient-processing technology rather than a consumer brand. Its immediate buyers are food-ingredient manufacturers, precision-fermentation companies, plant-protein producers, dairy and agricultural cooperatives, and biotech, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical processors that need lower-cost purification or waste valorization. The route to market is compatible with existing plants: supply a sample kit, test a customer's broth or side stream, demonstrate purity and yield, then move into a pilot or a recurring supply and process-integration agreement. The company's 2026 pitch material identifies food ingredients and protein producers, dairy and agricultural cooperatives, and biotech, cosmetics, and pharma companies as target customers, and asks for pilots and strategic partners including CNTA and CSIC. It reports that testing kits are sold in the European Union, United States, and Japan. Fresh Start's portfolio describes BioResin as a downstream solution for precision-fermentation and plant-based ingredients, while Grow-NY lists Medium Well as an Israeli finalist and emphasizes recovery from acid whey, soy, pea, and other food-waste streams. No named paying customer, purchase volume, recurring revenue, or signed long-term supply agreement is public. The commercial challenge is to make qualification fast enough for food companies while meeting their requirements for food safety, lot-to-lot consistency, documentation, and integration with existing filtration and chromatography equipment.

**Traction, funding, and third-party validation.** Medium Well was incorporated in Israel in October 2022 and has been supported by the Fresh Start FoodTech incubator and the Israel Innovation Authority ecosystem. Public startup profiles report a $1.1 million pre-seed investment from Fresh Start in November 2022 and a further $900,000 bridge or undisclosed round in 2024 involving Aston Partners and Iron Nation; a 2026 accelerator brief summarizes approximately $2.1 million raised. Because the public round descriptions use different reporting dates and categories, the prudent conclusion is approximately $2.1 million of disclosed or summarized financing rather than a fully reconciled cap table. The same accelerator brief reports two patents, successful tests with sweet-protein, dairy, and preservative-protein producers, testing kits sold in three major markets, and commercial validation planned for 2026. Fresh Start and Iron Nation independently identify BioResin as the company's core platform and characterize it as a cost-effective, sustainable alternative to synthetic molecular-separation media. These are meaningful early validation signals: the technology has progressed beyond a laboratory concept and is being offered to industrial partners. They are not proof of scale. Public sources do not disclose revenue, gross margin, manufacturing capacity, granted-patent numbers, customer names, regulatory clearances, or independently reproduced head-to-head economics against incumbent resins.

**Founders and team background.** The company has an unusually legible technical founding group for a small food-tech startup. Shelly Lotan is CEO and co-founder; the official team page describes her as an entrepreneur and international marketing specialist with biotechnology and deep-tech commercialization experience. Nir Berdugo, PhD, is CTO and co-founder, with a doctorate in fluid mechanics, a master's degree in energy engineering, a bachelor's degree in biotechnology, food, and engineering from the Technion, and experience in wastewater treatment and process design. Roni Shapira, PhD, is the scientific co-founder and is described as a microbiology and bacterial-genetic-engineering expert from the Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture and a co-founder of Better Juice. The team page also identifies Naama Degany, M.Sc., as research manager and Erez Cohen, PhD, as product-development lead; Cohen's background includes biopolymers, bioplastics, and biomass-derived materials. Tammy Meiron, PhD, advises the company after more than 25 years in life-science, pharmaceutical, and food R&D, production, and technology transfer. This mix covers commercialization, process engineering, microbiology, analytical work, and materials science. The public record does not establish current headcount beyond small-team indicators, the full patent inventorship, a dedicated regulatory lead, or the manufacturing and quality organization needed for food and pharmaceutical customers.

**Competitive dynamics.** Medium Well competes against several layers of substitute. Established chromatography and filtration suppliers such as Cytiva, Sartorius, Merck Millipore, and 3M offer validated resins, membranes, process hardware, and global technical-support organizations. In food processing, specialty ingredient companies can use conventional ion exchange, membrane concentration, precipitation, or enzymatic treatment to reach acceptable purity even when those methods require more stages or higher operating cost. Upstream alternative-protein companies may also choose to redesign their organisms or fermentation media to avoid difficult downstream separation. Medium Well's potential edge is a combination of low-cost feedstock, a biodegradable and food-compatible matrix, single-step selectivity, reuse, and a second revenue path from turning side-stream proteins into functional fiber ingredients. The company also benefits from a local ecosystem that includes Tnuva, Tempo, Fresh Start, the Innovation Authority, OurCrowd, Iron Nation, and Aston Partners. None of those relationships, however, proves an exclusive channel or a durable moat. Large separation vendors can adapt product lines, customers may prefer familiar validated consumables, and each new protein stream may require application-specific development. Defensibility will depend on patent scope, accumulated binding and process data, repeatable manufacturing, customer qualification history, and total cost of ownership demonstrated at pilot and commercial scale.

**Defense, security, and resilience dual-use relevance.** Medium Well is a food-security and industrial-resilience company with an enabling dual-use pathway, not a defense supplier. Protein purification is a shared capability across commercial food, biomanufacturing, emergency nutrition, and some strategic life-science workflows. A low-cost, biodegradable separation medium could help allied producers extract more nutrition from constrained feedstocks, reduce dependence on imported synthetic resins, and make local or distributed protein production more viable during supply-chain disruption. BioResin Core's recovery of protein from acid whey, soy, pea, and other side streams is directly relevant to food availability and waste reduction; BioResin Pure could lower the cost of producing fermentation-derived enzymes and ingredients used in resilient food and biotech supply chains. The same process expertise could be relevant to disaster-response nutrition or domestic manufacturing of selected biological inputs, but those are plausible applications rather than demonstrated programs. Medium Well discloses no military customer, emergency-procurement contract, classified work, pharmaceutical approval, or humanitarian deployment. Its dual-use score therefore reflects credible resilience adjacency and Israeli food-system capacity, while remaining below companies with fielded defense or critical-infrastructure products. Diligence should test whether the material can be produced from regionally available biomass, operate with reduced water and chemical inputs, and meet high-assurance traceability requirements during a disruption.

**Growth stage, trajectory, and key diligence risks.** Medium Well is best classified as early and moving from pilot validation toward commercial qualification. The company was incorporated in 2022, has raised roughly $2.1 million by public summaries, has named founders and a specialist team, and reports TRL 6 validation, patents, industrial tests, and sample-kit sales. It is not yet a mature ingredient supplier: public evidence does not establish recurring revenue, a production plant, named anchor customers, commercial purity certificates, or repeat orders. The trajectory depends on converting application tests into standard product specifications that food and biotech manufacturers can buy without extensive bespoke work. Key diligence points are: (1) verify binding capacity, purity, recovery, cycle life, and economics against incumbent synthetic resins; (2) inspect patent claims and freedom to operate around plant-derived functional fibers and magnetic or edible matrices; (3) validate microbial, allergen, heavy-metal, pesticide, and residual-processing controls; (4) determine whether BioResin Core is an ingredient, a processing aid, or both in each target market; (5) confirm whether kits sold in the EU, US, and Japan are paid commercial sales or evaluation samples; (6) measure manufacturing yield and lot consistency from variable agricultural byproducts; (7) secure named design partners and a repeatable pilot-to-production conversion rate; and (8) assess capital needs for a manufacturing line and regulatory support. The upside is a distinctive Israeli platform that links circular feedstocks, molecular separation, and alternative-protein economics. The principal risk is that strong pilot performance may not survive qualification, scale, and the conservative purchasing behavior of food and pharmaceutical customers.