milk-proteins
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Fengru Lin
Fengru Lin is the co-founder and CEO of TurtleTree, a biotech company making dairy proteins without cows. A former Google account manager who took up cheesemaking as a hobby, she went hunting across Asia for clean raw milk, was horrified by what she found on the farms, and started a company to make milk in a lab instead. TurtleTree pivoted from full cell-cultured milk to precision fermentation, and now produces lactoferrin, a high-value milk protein once called 'pink gold,' using microbes instead of herds. She has raised roughly $44 million and made EDGE's 35 Under 35 and Her World's Young Woman Achiever lists.
TurtleTree
TurtleTree is a biotech and food-tech company that makes lactoferrin - one of the rarest and most valuable proteins in cow's milk - without the cow. Using precision fermentation, its flagship ingredient LF+ recreates the bioactive milk protein at scale for use in immunity, gut health, sports nutrition and infant nutrition products. In 2025 TurtleTree became the first company in the world to win an FDA 'No Questions' GRAS letter for precision-fermented lactoferrin, clearing it to commercialize in the U.S.