Join Dr. Reza Ovissipour, Assistant Professor in Cellular Agriculture in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Virginia Tech, to learn about his work in optimizing media for the production of cultivated seafood.
Enabling easy animal ingredient substitutions in a wide range of food products.
There is a need for a supplier of low-cost growth factors produced without the use of animals to support the proliferation phase of cultivated meat production. The cost of growth factor production will need to be brought down significantly as cultivated meat production is scaled up.
Plant-based protein makerspaces would be publicly available spaces where interested members of the public could learn, experiment, and work collaboratively on projects related to plant-based proteins. They could offer access to the physical equipment necessary to conduct projects as well as technical assistance to inform them. The aim would be to encourage more interaction between the public and the alternative protein industry, thus stimulating the exploration and development of more ideas. Makerspaces may also be able to increase positive consumer perception of the technology by increasing familiarity with the relevant production processes. The logistics of the makerspace should be done in such a way to maximize democratization and inclusion of a large segment of the public.
Both the cultivated meat industry and interested members of the general public would benefit from the creation of makerspaces focused on cultivated meat. These would be publicly available spaces where community members can learn, experiment, and work collaboratively on projects related to cultivated meat. Here, they would have access to the physical equipment necessary to conduct projects as well as technical assistance to inform them. The aim of this project is to encourage more interaction between the public and the alternative protein industry, thus stimulating the exploration and development of more ideas. Makerspaces could also promote greater understanding of and openness to cultivated meat among future consumers of the product.
There is currently a lack of resources for high school students interested in alternative proteins. Students interested in entering this field would benefit from the creation of summer courses that provide motivated high school students with the theoretical background, hands on experience, and a network of peers to help foster their interest in alternative proteins. The aim of initiating such a program is to encourage students to pursue self-directed learning in this area, thus stimulating growth in the alternative protein community.
Cultivated meat research focuses primarily on muscle fibers and fat cells. However, other cell types serve functions that are often under appreciated in their relevance to cultivated meat. Co-culture methods with various support cells could solve a variety of challenges on the road to developing affordable, high-quality cultivated meat.
Alternative protein companies would benefit from the availability of off-the-shelf or customizable bioreactors for cultivated meat and fermentation-derived products. This need could be filled by increased investment in and support of existing companies (see "Related Efforts"), creation of new companies, or strategic pivots by companies currently producing bioreactor technology for other applications.
A handful of companies and researchers are developing scaffold materials for use in various steps of the cultivated meat production process, but to date the topic of scaffolding has been largely overshadowed by the challenge of producing cell mass at scale. This is a topic in need of much more research and development as the industry matures in order to enable the development of products that have meat-like structure and texture, which will be more appealing to consumers than unstructured meat products.
Academic researchers or consortia consisting of several cultivated meat companies should undertake research aimed at understanding metabolic pathways and fluxes within cultivated meat-relevant cell types. The outputs of this research could be used to improve the efficiency of media optimization efforts and to enhance the organoleptic and nutritional properties of cultivated meat products.
