Scalable co-culture as an approach for improved cultivated meat production

Project ID: 2531ad1494

(You will need this ID for your application)

Research Theme: Manufacturing The Future

UCL Lead department: Biochemical Engineering

Department Website

Lead Supervisor: Mariana Petronela Hanga

Project Summary:

The current agricultural practices to produce meat are unethical and unsustainable. Moreover, they contribute ~14.5% of the total greenhouse gas emissions and have a significantly negative impact on the environment, biodiversity, and climate. Cultivated meat is genuine animal meat produced in a controlled way using cell culture in bioreactors rather than through animal slaughter. It requires significantly fewer natural resources for its production, doesn’t come with animal welfare concerns. Meat is composed of muscle, fat and connective tissue cells (amongst others). To obtain a tissue that resembles the texture and flavour of traditional meat, co-culture of the meat component cell types is necessary. However, to date, this avenue has been loosely explored and there are still many unknowns regarding the feasibility of such approach to produce cultivated meat. Co-culture is complex as it involves growing together multiple cell types with different nutritional and topographical requirements. Because of this complexity, most studies to date have been carried out at small scale in two dimensional set-ups that are not feasible for industrial production.

This project aims to investigate scalable co-culture approaches for improved cultivated meat production. Bovine myosatellite cells will be cocultured with bovine adipose-derived stem cells. Coculturing approaches to be investigated will include encapsulation in hydrogels, microcarrier and aggregate cultures. The candidate will join the UCL Cellular Agriculture Research Group that comprises PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working on cultivated meat-focused projects.

Expected technical skills to be developed throughout this PhD project include stem cell expansion and differentiation, microcarrier and aggregate cultures, bioreactor cultures, stem cell characterisation, cell encapsulation in hydrogels, fluorescent microscopy, metabolic analysis, flow cytometry, image analysis.