Bioengineering Outlook on Cultivated Meat Production

Abstract

Cultured meat (also referred to as cultivated meat or cell-based meat)—CM—is fabricated through the process of cellular agriculture (CA), which entails application of bioengineering, i.e., tissue engineering (TE) principles to the production of food. The main TE principles include usage of cells, grown in a controlled environment provided by bioreactors and cultivation media supplemented with growth factors and other needed nutrients and signaling molecules, and seeded onto the immobilization elements—microcarriers and scaffolds that provide the adhesion surfaces necessary for anchor-dependent cells and offer 3D organization for multiple cell types. Theoretically, many solutions from regenerative medicine and biomedical engineering can be applied in CM-TE, i.e., CA. However, in practice, there are a number of specificities regarding fabrication of a CM product that needs to fulfill not only the majority of functional criteria of muscle and fat TE, but also has to possess the sensory and nutritional qualities of a traditional food component, i.e., the meat it aims to replace. This is the reason that bioengineering aimed at CM production needs to be regarded as a specific scientific discipline of a multidisciplinary nature, integrating principles from biomedical engineering as well as from food manufacturing, design and development, i.e., food engineering. An important requirement is also the need to use as little as possible of animal-derived components in the whole CM bioprocess. In this review, we aim to present the current knowledge on different bioengineering aspects, pertinent to different current scientific disciplines but all relevant for CM engineering, relevant for muscle TE, including different cell sources, bioreactor types, media requirements, bioprocess monitoring and kinetics and their modifications for use in CA, all in view of their potential for efficient CM bioprocess scale-up. We believe such a review will offer a good overview of different bioengineering strategies for CM production and will be useful to a range of interested stakeholders, from students just entering the CA field to experienced researchers looking for the latest innovations in the field.

Using Vertebrate Stem and Progenitor Cells for Cellular Agriculture, State-of-the-Art, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

“…However, when engineering a sizeable 3D tissue construct, it is necessary to achieve proper transport of oxygen and nutrients as well as the elimination of carbon dioxide and other waste products, in order to enable cellular survival. Instead of engineering challenging vascular structures, a promising alternative is the use of perfusion systems, which mimic the vascularization process [19].…”

“…Another important aspect to consider when planning to scale up is the culture medium as one of the major large-scale bottlenecks since the media-related costs still represent the highest proportion of total costs in CM/CS bioprocessing [19,234]. Different approaches are being applied to reduce the media-related costs including media recycling and modifying the medium composition (covered in Section 3.2.2 Biochemical cues) as well as applying feeding strategies that maximize cell production while minimizing medium consumption.…”

“…As this review focuses on the cell-related aspects of CA-procedures for obtaining CM/CF/CS products, we invite the reader to consult other excellent recent reviews and publications that cover other aspects relevant to CA, such as support structures for cell immobilization comprising microcarriers (MCs) [12,13] and 3D scaffolds [14][15][16][17][18], types of bioreactors [19][20][21][22], bioprocess monitoring options [19,20,23] and methods of fabrication that can be utilized in CA [15,24,25], as these will not be covered in the current review in detail. In addition, we ought to mention two recent reviews that deal with the topics of cell types of relevance for CM/CS, but with a different focus than the current review.…”

Mammalian Cell-Growth Monitoring Based on an Impedimetric Sensor and Image Processing within a Microfluidic Platform

“…Different sensing solutions have been proposed in the literature for monitoring the relevant parameters of cell growth in a bioreactor. They are summarized in our previously published review articles [ 18 , 19 ].…”

Validated LC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous analysis of veterinary drugs in cultured meat media

“…In the culture media required to produce cultured meat, antibiotics must be added to prevent the growth of bacteria, fungi, and viruses during the manufacturing process (Ong et al 2021). For example, during the production of cultured meat, penicillin is frequently employed (Pajčin et al 2022). The inhibition of microbial growth is desirable to prevent the inhibition of targeted animal cell growth, and to minimize the toxin formation attributed to such microorganisms (Arora 2013).…”