(GRE) THE HOLY GRAIL OF CULTIVATED MEAT

Researchers in Japan say they’ve reached a “breakthrough” in tissue engineering that could open up “transformative opportunities” for cultivated meat production.

To solve one of cultivated meat’s biggest challenges, scientists have resorted to the circulatory system.

The same way blood vessels carry nutrients and oxygen to cells to help animals grow, scientists from the University of Tokyo have devised a “breakthrough” method to deliver these nutrients to artificial tissue, making it possible to grow whole cuts of cultivated meat, the holy grail for the future food industry.

Currently, most production methods can only render tiny pieces of cultivated meat (akin to mince), which are then assembled into a larger product via edible scaffolds, or combined with plant-based binders and ingredients to form a whole piece.

The problem lies in the random distribution of hollow fibres, which prevents uniform nutrient delivery and hinders tissue quality. Shoji Takeuchi and his colleagues have come up with what they say is a “scalable, top-down strategy” for producing whole cuts of cultivated meat using a perfusable hollow fibre bioreactor.

The study, published in the Trends in Biotechnology journal, explained that getting enough oxygen and nutrients to the cells in the centre of thick tissues is a major hurdle. Diffusion alone can’t sustain cells across considerable distances.

To overcome that, the researchers developed a bioreactor equipped with an array of semi-permeable hollow fibres that function as artificial circulation systems, which ensured uniform nutrient distribution throughout the tissue.

“We’re using semipermeable hollow fibres, which mimic blood vessels in their ability to deliver nutrients to the tissues,” said Takeuchi.

“These fibres are already commonly used in household water filters and dialysis machines for patients with kidney disease. It’s exciting to discover that these tiny fibres can also effectively help create artificial tissues and, possibly, whole organs in the future,” he added.

“We overcame the challenge of achieving perfusion across thick tissues by arranging hollow fibres with microscale precision,” Takeuchi says.

Tissues without an integrated circular system have generally been limited to a thickness of less than 1mm, but this new method allowed the scientists to produce a 2cm thick piece of chicken muscle that was several centimetres long and wide. Made using chicken fibroblast cells, which make up connective tisuse, the meat weighed 11g, and was about the size of a chicken nugget. More of this article (green queen) - link - more like this (cultivated meat) - link - more like this (Japan) - link