cultured meat

Cell Cultured Meat

A New Era in Food Technology

Advances in cell culture and scaffolding have enabled the production of genuine meat, called cultured meat, from animal cells without the need for animal slaughter or the environmental costs of raising livestock.

AMSBIO products are supporting the ground-breaking research into this exciting new area of food technology, and aiding the development of new cultured meat products.

What is Cultured Meat?

  • Cultured meat is made by growing animal cells in an artificial environment, with the aim of producing meat resembling the texture, flavour and nutritional value of conventional meat, without the ethical and environmental costs.
  • It is predicated that the use of this new technology could reduce the environmental impact of meat consumption by around 90% (Tuomisto and Teixeira de Mattos 2011).
  • The overall goal is to mass produce cultured meat products to supply the increasing global demand for meat, whilst reducing the impact of meat production on the environment.

Comparison with Conventional Meat Production

How is Cultured Meat made?

Current Research and Development

  • AMSBIO offers vital products for pioneering cultured meat research, including skeletal muscle differentiation kits, recombinant extracellular matrix and cryopreservation media.
  • We also offer a vast biorepository containing animal DNA, RNA and tissue to act as positive controls, along with ELISA kits for quantification of meat proteins, such as collagen.
Different Categories of AMSBIO Products for the Cultured Meat Industry:
  1. Correct environment and stimuli for cultured cells: ECM, lentivirus, differentiation kits, growth factors and other recombinant proteins. Top tip: coat beads with MAPtrix or iMatrix-511 ECM to increase the efficiency of your cell culture.
  2. Standards and kits to test if the cells are behaving like the in vivo model: Biorepository, assay kits.
  3. Cryopreservation to archive cells for reference or future use: CELLBANKER, STEM-CELLBANKER.
Case Study: Growth of Pig Stem Cells on iMatrix-511 silk as recombinant ECM
Investigate the full range below!
New infographic R ecombinant P r oteins Lentiviral P articles Assay K its Sk eletal M uscle D iffe r entiation K it M ouse F eeder C ells Lipidu r e- C oat P lates B io r eposito r y C r yop r ese r vation M edia STE M - CELLBAN K ER - GMP G rade CELLBAN K ER CEL L O TION R ecombinant & Animal-f r ee E xtracellular M atrix MA P trix B iomimetics & Sc r een Arrays i M atrix Laminin E8 fragments MA P trix H y gel

Fig. 5. AMSBIO products sold to cultured meat companies in 2020/21. Click on each square to explore our range of products further!

The Commercial Landscape of Cultured Meat

  • Huge leaps have been made in the field of cultured meat: from starting as an abstract concept, to $505 million of investment into the sector between 2016 and 2020.
  • Many new cultured meat ventures have emerged all over the world in recent years, as shown by the spinning globe infographic! Start-up companies are not only developing cultured meat products, but also the materials and equipment necessary for commercialisation.
  • The timeline below shows the leading edge of the industry, which is in the pilot phase of development and are aiming to scale up production of cultured cells.
  • In an exciting development, the world’s first commercial sale of cultured meat took place in a restaurant in Singapore in Dec 2020, and it is hoped that this will be common place in the near future.

Fig. 6. Cultured Meat as a global enterprise. The size of the circle is proportional to the number of cultured meat companies in that particular country, including companies developing cell culture media and scaffolding etc. for the sector. Figure created using data from the Good Food Institute.

Challenges to Commercialisation

To scale production for mass consumption, there are complex challenges in 5 main areas that need to be solved:

The Future

• The next step is to reduce costs of key components to scale up production of cultured meat to an industrial scale for mass consumption.
• Increased collaboration and transparency between cultured meat companies and researchers would decrease the time necessary to reach industrial scale production.
• Obtaining regulatory approval from governments and regulatory bodies is essential for the success of cultured meat.

Featured Citations

Pluripotent stem cells related to embryonic disc exhibit common self-renewal requirements in diverse livestock species
Kinoshita, M., Kobayashi, T., Planells, B., Klisch, D., Spindlow, D., Masaki, H., ... Alberio, R. & Smith, A., (2021), Development, 148(23), dev199901.

Citing iMatrix Recombinant Laminin 511-E8 fragments

Simple and effective serum-free medium for sustained expansion of bovine satellite cells for cell cultured meat.
Stout, A. J., Mirliani, A. B., White, E. C., Yuen, J. S. K., & Kaplan, D. L. (2021), bioRxiv, 2021.2005.2028.446057

Citing iMatrix Recombinant Laminin 511-E8 fragments

Engineering carotenoid production in mammalian cells for nutritionally enhanced cell-cultured foods.
Stout, A. J., Mirliani, A. B.,  Soule-Albridge, E. L., Cohen, J. M., & Kaplan, D. L. (2020), Metabolic Engineering, 62, 126-137.

Citing iMatrix Recombinant Laminin 511-E8 fragments

Extracellular heme proteins influence bovine myosatellite cell proliferation and the color of cell-based meat.
Simsa, R., Yuen, J., Stout, A., Rubio, N., Fogelstrand, P., & Kaplan, D. L. (2019), Foods, 8(10).

Citing iMatrix Recombinant Laminin 511-E8 fragments

The amount range of membrane cholesterol required for robust cell adhesion and proliferation in serum-free condition.
Takii, S., Wu, J., & Okamura, D. (2021), bioRxiv, 2021.2010.2021.465296

Citing iMatrix Recombinant Laminin 511-E8 fragments

Harvest of quality-controlled bovine myogenic cells and biomimetic bovine muscle tissue engineering for sustainable meat production.
Takahashi, H., Yoshida, A., Gao, B., Yamanaka, K., & Shimizu, T. (2022), Biomaterials, 287, 121649.

Citing iMatrix Recombinant Laminin 511-E8 fragments.

Isolation and Characterization of Tissue Resident CD29-Positive Progenitor Cells in Livestock to Generate a Three-Dimensional Meat Bud. 
Naraoka, Y., Mabuchi, Y., Yoneyama, Y., Suto, E. G., Hisamatsu, D., Ikeda, M., . . . Akazawa, C. (2021), Cells, 10(9), 2499.

Citing CELLBANKER 1 (from NIPPON ZENYAKU KOGYO)

Sources and Further Reading

The Science of Cultivated Meat 
Good Food Institute, (2021)

Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production.
Tuomisto, H. L., & Teixeira de Mattos, M. J. (2011), Environmental science and technology, , 45(14), 6117-6123.

Scientific, sustainability and regulatory challenges of cultured meat.
Post, M. J., Levenberg, S., Kaplan, D. L., Genovese, N., Fu, J., Bryant, C. J., . . . Moutsatsou, P. (2020), Nature Food, 1(7), 403-415.

Tissue Engineering for Clean Meat Production.
Ben-Arye, T., & Levenberg, S. (2019), Frontiers in sustainable food systems, 3.

Trends and ideas in technology, regulation and public acceptance of cultured meat.
Guan, X., Lei, Q., Yan, Q., Li, X., Zhou, J., Du, G., & Chen, J. (2021), Future Foods, 3, 100032.