Technological and structural aspects of scaffold manufacturing for cultured meat: recent advances, challenges, and opportunities

Abstract

In vitro cultured meat is an emerging area of research focus with an innovative approach through tissue engineering (i.e., cellular engineering) to meet the global food demand. The manufacturing of lab-cultivated meat is an innovative business that alleviates life-threatening environmental issues concerning public health and animal well-being on the global platform. There has been a noteworthy advancement in cultivating artificial meat, but still, there are numerous challenges that impede the swift headway of lab-grown meat production at a commercially large scale. In this review, we focus on the manufacturing of edible scaffolds for cultured meat production. In brief, first an introduction to cultivating artificial meat and its current scenario in the market is provided. Further, a discussion on the understanding of composition, cellular, and molecular communications in muscle tissue is presented, which are vital to scaling up the production of lab-grown meat. In continuation, the major components (e.g., cells, biomaterial scaffolds, and their manufacturing technologies, media, and potential bioreactors) for cultured meat production are conferred followed by a comprehensive discussion on the most recent advances in lab-cultured meat. Finally, existing challenges and opportunities including future research perspectives for scaling-up cultured meat production are discussed with conclusive interpretations.

Keywords:

• Adipogenesis
• cultured meat
• edible scaffolds
• manufacturing technologies
• myogenesis
• tissue engineering

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) (Grant No. 2021R1I1A3059994) and Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (IPET) through High Value-added Food Technology Development Program funded by Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) (321027-5). The authors are also thankful to the authors whose articles are cited in this review article.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anuj Kumar

Anuj Kumar: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Validation and visualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Ankur Sood: Investigation, Methodology, Writing-original draft. Sung Soo Han: Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

Ankur Sood

Anuj Kumar: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Validation and visualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Ankur Sood: Investigation, Methodology, Writing-original draft. Sung Soo Han: Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

Sung Soo Han

Anuj Kumar: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Validation and visualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Ankur Sood: Investigation, Methodology, Writing-original draft. Sung Soo Han: Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.