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“Successful commercialization of cultured meat hinges on improving the current productivity of bioprocesses and decreasing the cost of production.”
A recent report by McKinsey estimated that the cultivated meat market could reach $25 billion by 2030, assuming a 1% global annual meat consumption growth rate. The overall animal-protein market will reach approximately 531 million metric tons of meat, of which cultured meat could contribute up to 2.1 million metric tons, or roughly 0.5%, of the total meat consumed globally. However, the blossoming field of start-ups addressing this sector is just now slowly starting to commercialize their processes. For example, GOOD Meat (a subsidiary of EAT Just) received regulatory approval and began selling the first cultured meat, crispy sesame chicken, to be exact, in Singapore in late 2020. Recently, Future Meat, an Israeli start-up, announced the world’s first industrial cultured meat facility capable of producing 500 kg (approx. 5,000 burgers) a day. Also, Wildtype, a Bay Area company, will soon open a facility capable of producing up to approximately 91k kg of cell-based seafood a year.
Successful commercialization of cultured meat hinges on improving the current productivity of bioprocesses and decreasing the cost of production. Sensors and analytics will play a key role in overcoming current manufacturing hurdles. Namely, sensors and analytics will be essential for food safety and process optimization. Food safety monitoring aims to accommodate the needs of both regulators and customers. Individual countries differ on what testing and inspection will be required for cultured meat products. For example, in the United States, both the FDA and USDA intend to collaborate in addressing the safety and oversight of food produced from the cell lines of USDA-approved species. Although we do not know what approaches such regulatory agencies will take, since the final product will be similar to traditionally harvested meat, conventional standards of “safety” should apply. Therefore, it is perhaps not presumptuous to assume that inspections will rely on existing and emerging methodologies.
Particular process analytical tools are already being used to optimize cell-based meat cultivation. These tools are invaluable to bioprocesses in biopharmaceutical development (e.g., monoclonal antibodies and other recombinant proteins), where product quality is consistently monitored and controlled. The analytical methods used almost universally across bioprocesses monitor pH, temperature, and dissolved oxygen levels. These approaches are usually integrated within the bioreactor or flask to provide non-destructive and real-time measurements of the culture dynamics and general physiological health. Cell density and viability are measured daily, if not more frequently, along with basic substrate nutrient levels (e.g., glucose and glutamine) and cell metabolites (e.g., ammonia and lactate). All these variables can easily be measured at-line (i.e., alongside the bioreactor) with simple-to-use analyzers. In some cases, automated fluidic sampling can be deployed to facilitate online analysis (i.e., direct fluidic connection to the bioreactor) to remove the manual sampling and preparation steps. With real-time data processing, feedback control may keep the process on the optimal course leading to improvements in the consistency of yield and quality.
Beyond these established analytics approaches, there are no simple methods to investigate the nutrient profile of the media before introduction into and during the process. Recall that the cell media is a significant contributor to the overall cost of scaled-up production and is chemically complex. Some analytical approaches, like chromatography, would be impractical to place alongside the bioreactors. As a result, chromatography-based instruments are relegated to core analytical facilities, burdening engineers with complicated sample preparation requirements and slow data turnaround times. This is a problem that 908 Devices’ latest analytical tool, the REBEL, has solved. The REBEL is a self-contained process analyzer for fresh and spent media analysis. It can run clarified diluted samples, which is much simpler than the lengthy and costly derivatization schemes and analysis times required by comparable approaches. To date, the REBEL is used in three of the largest cultured meat-producing companies. These REBEL systems are helping their teams assess both new media quality between different lots and suppliers and spent media during processes to tune nutrient profiles for superior cell growth and proliferation.
Environmental costs, ethical considerations, and safety issues are among the most significant global meat production concerns. Nevertheless, cultured meat is viewed as a realistic opportunity to disrupt the conventional animal husbandry model by delivering fundamentally the same nutrient profile in a safe, ethical, environmentally sustainable, and scalable operation. Winston Churchill predicted this day would come when he wrote, “With a greater knowledge of what are called hormones, i.e. the chemical messengers in our blood, it will be possible to control growth. We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” Given the current pace of cell culture and tissue engineering advancements, society may not be far off from realizing Mr. Churchill’s dream.
Cell-Based Meat Process Development Series
- Part 1: An Introduction to the Cell-Based Meat Revolution
- Part 2: The Variety of Process Considerations in Cell-Based Meat Production
- Part 3: How Cell Proliferation for Cultured Meat Production Relies on the Appropriate Microcarrier or Scaffold Selection
- Part 4: The Importance of Cell Culture Media Optimization for Cost and Productivity Considerations in Cell-Based Meat Processes
- Part 5: The Role of Analytics in Cell-Based Meat Production
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