Development of plant-based edible microcarriers and scaffolds for use in cellular agriculture i.e. cultivated meat tissue engineering

Project aim: Project aims are focused on development of plant-based edible microcarriers and scaffolds for use in cellular agriculture i.e. cultivated meat tissue engineering. The project is jointly implemented by the Serbian partners Biosense Institute and Faculty of Technology University of Novi Sad, and German Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (Fraunhofer IVV).

 

About the project: Cultivated meat – CM (meat produced in cultures of animal cells) promises enormous benefits for the animal welfare and the environment, and offers tremendous potential for feeding the growing world population (projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 which will require food production to increase by 70%). Culturing of skeletal muscle cells for CM production is complex process and it can be divided into 2 stages with distinct goals: Stage 1 (S1) proliferation phase – with the goal to obtain maximum number of cells from the starting batch of cells (whether myoblasts and skeletal muscle resident stem cells i.e. satellite cells); Stage 2 (S2) differentiation and maturation stage where cells are seeded onto scaffolds, allowed to mature into the skeletal muscle cells and coerced into maximum protein production (hypertrophy stage). Each of these phases has specific requirements for the design of media, scaffolds, and bioreactors.

Since the microcarriers (MC)/scaffold constitute a main component of the final product (MCs in minced meat, 3D scaffold in “steak-like” products), these structural components should be edible and resemble the composition and properties of meat. Plant-based materials are ideal components for this use, since they can be porous, food-grade, inexpensive and can offer good anchor points for cell adherence. n addition, the combination of different plant-based materials improves the structure, better imitating the fibrous and juicy texture of meat. Such “hybrid” products using both plant- and animal-sourced components are estimated to be the first of cellular agriculture products to enter the commercial arena.

For all the above reasons, the focus of this project is on the plant-based scaffold elements that will be used in both phases of the KM bioprocess.