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A group of Japanese researchers has made a “breakthrough” in cultivated meat production.
The University of Tokyo’s Professor Shoji Takeuchi and his team have developed technology that imitates a circulatory system and evenly distributes nutrients throughout a piece of meat. The researchers successfully grew 1 by 2 cm long, nugget-style chicken pieces.
Scientists have been working on the scalable production of cultivated meat – also known as as cultured or “lab-grown” meat – for a little over a decade. However, nutrient distribution remains a significant hurdle for “large-scale” biofabrication and growing whole cuts of meat.
“The biofabrication of cultured whole-cut meats is challenging, because it requires the formation of densely packed, highly aligned muscle fibers across a length scale larger than a few centimeters,” explained Takeuchi, writing in Trends in Biotechnology earlier this month.
To distribute nutrients evenly, the team created a bioreactor that grows meat in a gel evenly permeated by hollow fibers. This resulted in “densely packed, highly aligned muscle fibers” like those found in traditional meat, and gave the protein an “improved texture and flavor.”
These fibers currently require removal, but future projects could use cellulose versions instead, making every part edible. The addition of artificial blood could further streamline production by carrying more oxygen and allowing for even larger pieces of meat.
Read more: V-Label International Launches New ‘C-Label’ For Cultivated Meat
The growth of the cultivated meat sector
According to the Good Food Institute (GFI), there are currently nearly 200 companies working on cultivated meat or related technologies with over USD $3.1 billion in backing. However, despite multiple breakthrough announcements, scalability remains complicated.
Speaking to the Guardian, professor Derek Stewart of the James Hutton Institute’s Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC) described the new research as an “elegant” and “transformative” step towards the development of truly scalable cultivated meat in the future.
Takeuchi’s team noted that their breakthrough methods could also be applied outside of the food sector. Their new artificial circulatory system, for example, could potentially enable the large-scale growth of replacement organs, benefiting “regenerative and transplant medicine.”
Read more: Cultivated Pet Food Made From Mouse Cells Gets EU Approval
