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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

scaffold

These Four Startups Are Growing Animal-free Scaffolds for Cell-Cultured Meat

It’s one thing to grow an amorphous blob of muscle or fat cells in a bioreactor—and another thing to recreate the structure of animal tissue. In order to make a complex product like a steak or a salmon fillet, cell-cultured meat producers need to provide their stem cells with a scaffold to grow on.

In nature, growing stem cells are housed within a structure of proteins and polysaccharides called the extracellular matrix. The cells’ interaction with this environment guides the way that they adhere, differentiate, and migrate.

Both cell-based meat manufacturers and business-to-business suppliers in the industry are experimenting with different scaffolding materials that can mimic the extracellular matrix. Below, we’ll discuss some scaffolding solutions and the startups that are exploring them.

You might notice that all of the materials we mention are animal-free—a significant development as alternative meat companies seek to reduce their dependence on animal inputs.


1. DaNAgreen is developing extracellular matrix stand-ins for both clinical and food applications. On its website, the South Korean startup describes Protinet™-P, its scaffolding product for cell-cultured meat manufacturing, as “a food that incubates food.” Protinet™-P scaffolds are completely edible, as they’re made from isolated plant proteins.

DanNAgreen currently offers its products in custom sizes and shapes. The company plans to spend the next few years scaling up production.

2. Seawith, a cell-cultured meat company also based in South Korea, is using algae-based scaffolds to grow its products. Along with being nutrient-rich, algae is relatively easy and inexpensive to grow. In The Spoon’s recent interview with Seawith, we learned that the company credits its algae scaffolding with the development of thicker cell-based steaks.

The company hopes to start selling its cell-cultured meat products to restaurants by 2023, though the team is awaiting regulatory decisions from the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

3. Excell is exploring the use of fungal mycelium as a scaffolding substrate. Mycelium contains the polymer chitin, which can be made to mimic some of the polysaccharides found in the natural extracellular matrix. Some fungi also have a meaty taste and texture, so it’s possible that mycelium-based substrates could enhance the sensory experience of eating cell-cultured meat.

Excell is currently offering mycelium scaffolding culture kits to researchers and product developers, and collecting feedback on how its products perform.

4. Matrix Meats of Ohio is approaching the challenge in a different way. The company uses an electrospinning technique to build nanofiber scaffolds. As FoodNavigator has reported, Matrix’s scaffolds can be made of a combination of different materials, which could allow cell-based meat producers to grow cultured muscles and fats together on a single structure.

Matrix works directly with cell-cultured meat startups to develop custom scaffolding solutions for their products. Client companies can control the scaffolding material, fiber size, and other factors.

These innovations with plant and fungi-based scaffolds could just be the start. Animal-derived collagen has been widely studied as a cellular scaffold material (which makes sense, as collagen is one of the proteins found in the natural extracellular matrix)—and it may be possible to make animal collagen scaffolds without using actual animals. Researchers have managed to produce animal collagen using gene-edited tobacco plants, and recombinant collagen produced by bacteria and yeast also look promising.

Advancements in animal-free scaffolding should help cell-cultured meat producers to cut costs and reduce their environmental impacts. (And this isn’t just a hypothetical: With its algae scaffold, DaNAgreen has been able to produce cell-based steaks at near price-parity with conventional products.) We’re likely to see much more innovation in the field as cell-cultured companies explore hybrid production options.

For Cultured Meat, Scaffolding is the Next Big Hurdle. Could LEGOs Hold the Answer?

As of now, cultured meat comes out looking one way: like mush. That’s because scientists have figured out ways to replicate animal muscle, fat, and tissue cells, but not how to make them grow to make fibers. In short, we can grow a hamburger, but not something like a steak, which requires a more solid physical form.

But scientists are working to change this, developing scaffolding technology to help those muscle cells grow in formations that would mimic the chew of pork chops, chicken strips, and, of course, steak.

Most recently — and most exciting to my inner five-year-old — is the LEGO method. Researchers from Penn State have developed a new technique to spin cornstarch fibers into an edible scaffold using LEGO pieces. The scaffold could then, at least theoretically, be used to grow cultured meat.

According to Dr. Gregory Ziegler, a food science professor at Penn State who’s been working on the project, to make the scaffold they use a technique called “electrospinning,” where scientists apply electricity to an edible starch solution as it dispenses from a nozzle, creating long threads that adhere to a LEGO “mat”. Ziegler told me that they chose to use LEGO pieces because they’re cheap and also plastic, so they don’t conduct electricity.

They’ve been developing the technique for five years but only recently figured out how to align the aforementioned threads to make longer fibers. Now they’re starting to look into applications for the technology — including lab-grown meat.

They haven’t actually tried growing any sort of meat on these electrospun scaffolds. Yet. Ziegler said the next step is to get more funding so they can try and efficiently scale scaffolding production to lower the cost of the technology. Eventually Ziegler plans that scaffolds will be made with some material other than LEGOs (sorry). They then want to execute some tests to see if the scaffolds are indeed as useful for cultured meat as Ziegler predicts they will be.

Photo: Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Ziegler’s method might be eye-catching, but he’s far from the only one trying to develop scaffolds for cell-based meat. In fact, scientists are experimenting with all manner of materials to try and make an edible ground for cellular agriculture.

One popular material is plants. By emptying plants of all their living material and leaving a sort of husk of cell walls, scientists can use their structure as a natural (and edible) blueprint for animal tissue. Worcester Polytechnic Institute is experimenting with spinach leaves as a scaffold for tissue growth (see above), and others are trying jackfruit and artichokes.

Fungi are also a natural fit. Startup Ecovative has developed a foam-like substance made out of mycelium, or delicate mushroom roots. Ecovative’s mushroom scaffolds can be grown in only 9 days and are tender enough to eat. They won’t dissolve, however, which could affect the overall flavor and texture of the end product.

Still, scaffolding isn’t the only way to create texture with cultured meat. Some companies are looking into 3D printing as a method to form “steaks” and more with animal tissue cells.

Of course, this technology is kind of moot until cell-based meat companies figure out how to clear those pesky regulatory hurdles and finally get the stuff to market. But as cultured meat becomes more widely available, and more affordable, consumer acceptance is going to play a larger and larger role. And it’ll be a lot easier to get the hardcore carnivores on board if they can try a cell-based steak that actually tastes — and chews — like the real thing.