production of animal proteins by cell systems - New Harvest

Experts’ opinions (9): Potential spin-offs of cultured meat research
• If one understands how to propagate muscle stem cells and how to differentiate these into
muscle cells, combined with the knowledge on muscle tissue engineering and muscle tissue
formation, this knowledge can be helpful in basic research to minimize the use of animals.
• Cheap growth media for other tissue engineering applications, including those in biomedicine.
Perhaps also insights into muscle tissue engineering that support medical therapies.
• Mostly in basic biology. Maybe also spin-off to medicine but more likely the other way around,
because most probably much more funding will go to the medical endeavor to grow human
organs for transplantation.
• As a spin-off, there is the strong potential that the role that technology can play in production
of food, morality and sustainability is re-evaluated.
• Cultured meat is a spin-off of medical research into the differentiation of stem cells in body
tissues.
• The technology will have an impact on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
• Fundamental knowledge on tissue engineering. Intellectual Property.
• As the development of the technology will demand contributions from several disciplines the
spinoffs are likely to be considerable:
o Chemical/biotechnological process plant construction and optimization
o Materials technology
o Biosensor technology
o Instrument manufacturing
o Advanced multivariate analysis methodology
o Mathematical modeling of biological tissues and organs from gene to phenotype
o Stem cell creation from domesticated animals
o Large scale stem cell culturing
o Cell co-culture methodologies and issues
o Methodologies for directed stem cell differentiation into skeletal muscle
o Bioprinting technology (myoblast sheets)
o The developmental biology of muscle tissue
o Experimental and theoretical biophysics of muscle tissue including the extracellular matrix
o The developing and mature muscle tissue phenotype (in the wide sense)
o Large scale genotyping technologies
o Muscle tissue phenotyping technologies (in the wide sense)
o (Large scale) 3-d cell (co-)culturing technology
o Neutral lipid / flavor /muscle cell fatty acid biology
o Enzymology of relevance to food processing
o Cell culture diseases and associated diagnostic methodology
o Production economist and process engineer to estimate costs under various regimes
o Environmental economist with experience in life-cycle analysis to estimate environmental
impacts relative to conventional meat
o Food market analyses to assess consumer acceptance of in vitro meat
Policy making
Commercial production of cultured meat is as yet not possible, since knowledge is still
lacking on the fundamental science level, as well as on the technological and societal
levels. For one, suitable, well-characterized, stem cells from farm animal species are not
yet available. In addition, there is a critical lack of information concerning culture
conditions that would keep these stem cells undifferentiated and culture conditions that
would steer these cells efficiently to skeletal muscle cells, bioreactors, etc. There is still
too little known about consumer's judgment influences, consumer's choices etc. For
reasons of credibility and for marketing strategies, it seems appropriate that a good
communication exists between scientists/developers/industry and consumers (societal
embedding).
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