Novel Microcarriers for Scalable Clean Meat Production

"In 2013, the first ever ''clean meat'' burger was produced, sold, and eaten at auction for $250,000. The cost of producing the burger was phenomenal, it only contained muscle cells, and inedible materials had been used in parts of the preparation. However, this became a steppingstone in the field of cellular agriculture and researchers and entrepreneurs across the world started to experiment with new cell types, biomaterials, manufacturing techniques, and bioprocesses to bring clean meat prototypes closer to reality. Despite huge advances in the field, the clean meat industry is still in its infancy, and a lot of work still needs to be done to make it an affordable and sustainable option.
One of the many challenges that persists is in designing a scalable process for the expansion and differentiation of cells found in meat. To this end, it is imperative to consider the costs of materials, their durability and mechanical properties, as well as techniques used to manufacture the microcarriers so they can endure the stirred tank bioreactor's (STR) conditions and promote cell attachment, growth and differentiation. It is also important to replicate the biological features of meat too by differentiating bovine mesenchymal stem cells (bMSC) into tissues found in natural meat (ie muscle, fat, connective tissue).
Aims
The overall aim is to design and develop edible microcarriers suitable for a scalable and cost-efficient bioprocess to produce minced meat-like products, while alleviating the need for detrimental enzymatic treatment at the cell recovery step.
Objectives
This will be achieved by 1) exploring and identifying suitable edible materials and manufacturing techniques in terms of adherence and expansion of bMSCs; 2) optimising the operating conditions used in the STR for microcarriers to support cell attachment and sustain cell growth; and 3) evaluating the potential of the newly fabricated microcarriers to promote bMSC differentiation to fat and muscle cells that will form the basis of the minced meat like products.
The microcarriers provide the surface on which the cells adhere and grow, and thus important factors to consider when designing new types are: adequate mechanical strength, so that they will not break up during mixing in the STR; low cost of production, to enable ease of scale up; and, biocompatible material, to promote cell attachment and expansion. We aim to test different techniques to fabricate the edible supports. More specifically, we will focus on the use of electrospinning and membrane extrusion.
Once the microcarriers are generated to the required standards, they will be tested for their ability to sustain adipose-derived bMSC growth, first in static conditions and then under agitation in spinner flasks. We will investigate parameters in relation to the bioreactor conditions, the mechanical stresses endured by microcarriers, and the growth and viability of cells.
In this study, we will concentrate on the ability of our edible microcarriers to support the differentiation of the bMSCs into muscle and fat. We will work at small scales under static conditions and carry out preliminary studies inducing myogenic and adipogenic differentiation. Our results will form the basis for future studies on the edible microcarrier performance in stirred tank reactors and potential bioreactor scale up.
Output
At the end of this project, we will be a step closer to creating an upstream cell expansion and differentiation platform process that can be part of the low-cost commercial manufacture of cultivated minced meat-based products. "