10087694Development of edible hollow fibre bioreactor for cultivated meat productionClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKAccording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the consumption of meat and conventional animal products must be reduced to decrease the worst effects of climate change. However, most people are unwilling to cut meat and animal products out of their diet. Cultivated meat produced through cellular agriculture can provide a path to keep meat in our diets while reducing the harmful impact these products have on the environment. Current stirred tank reactor (STR) technologies used in the production of cultivated meat have many shortcomings, including: (i) low cell densities, which require large and expensive equipment and processes; (ii) inefficient cell feeding, requiring high concentrations of expensive growth factors; (iii) high mixing load, which is harmful to the cells; and (iv) the end result is a cell paste, which requires complex further processing steps before forming food that resembles traditional meat products. To overcome these issues, new bioreactor technologies are required. To this end, hollow fibre membranes (HFMs) offer a solution as they: (i) can support cell densities 35-fold higher than STRs at densities similar to that found in animals (Storm et al., 2016); (ii) efficiently feed cells by design and require 2-8 times less growth factors (Allenby et al., 2019; Cabral et al., 2018); (iii) do not require harmful mixing; and (iv) edible hollow fibres form part of the final product and provide structure to the final food. Currently, the major cost drivers in cultivated production are the growth factor requirements, large STRs and associated equipment, and expensive selective cell breeding programs. As HFM bioreactors require significantly less growth factors, and cells can grow in an environment similar to that in animals, these costs may be reduced by up to 87.5%. However, current HFMs are made from petrochemical polymers or ceramics, which are inedible. To realise the advantages of HFM bioreactors, KalvoTech has developed edible HFMs. Edible HFMs represent a paradigm shift in bioreactor technology which can facilitate significantly less complex and expensive processes to produce cultivated meat at prices comparable to traditional meat products. KalvoTech, in this project, will produce an edible HFM bioreactor and carry out proof-of-concept industrial research to overcome market-entry barriers and facilitate the formation of commercial research and evaluation collaborations in the UK. By making scale-up more accessible, these partnerships will secure the UK's position as a leading high-value-added technology supplier in the cultivated meat industry and unlock the potential of cellular agriculture.