Optimizing media for chicken cells

Project aims

This project aims to develop novel advanced experimental optimization techniques to find low-cost, effective growth media and apply these techniques to chicken muscle cell cultures. It devises a process for growing chicken muscle cells in suspension or on edible scaffold microcarriers, as well as for the production of gelatin through plant cell culture for use as muscle cell scaffolding.

This work will create novel, efficient experimental optimization algorithms for general media and process optimization. It could reduce the cost of cultivated meat production via novel media optimization techniques.

Principal researcher

Dr. David Block

Professor, Department of Viticulture and Enology and Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California Davis, USA

Dr. Block holds extensive experience in fermentation process optimization and the development of experimental optimization methods. He also designs biopharmaceutical manufacturing and food fermentation facilities.

NSF funds cultivated meat research at UC Davis

The U.S. government awarded $3.55 million, to be dispersed over five years, to a team of researchers at UC Davis for open-access cultivated meat research. This grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) represents the U.S. government’s biggest investment in cultivated meat research ever.

How to explain cultivated meat to U.S. consumers

GFI surveyed 3,500 U.S. consumers to discover how strategic messaging can grow consumer understanding of and interest in cultivated meat.

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Illinois Alternative Protein Innovation Task Force Final Report

The first-in-the-nation Task Force, established in 2023, explored how the state can become a national hub for plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated proteins.

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