Cultivated icon Cultivated

Developing assays for meat-specific cell traits

Research to align on the appropriate assays would introduce standardization that can accelerate R&D efforts.

Production platform
  • Cultivated icon Cultivated
Solution category
  • Research
  • Commercial
Value chain segment
  • R&D
  • Production
Technology sector
  • Cell line development
Relevant actor
  • Industry
  • Academics
  • Startups

Description

Developing cultivated meat products will require alignment on a set of criteria and methodologies to demonstrate that the product sufficiently recapitulates the structure and biology of muscle tissue. While existing assays can be adapted from both meat science and muscle tissue engineering, there is currently no streamlined, consistent set of analytical tools to characterize this new type of food product. Research to align on the appropriate assays—followed by commercialization of kits or services to conduct them—would introduce standardization that can accelerate R&D efforts.

Current challenge

The companies that are developing cultivated meat (CM) will need to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses to assess the quality of their cell-based meat products. While the specific criteria and regulatory guidelines are not yet fully defined, we can anticipate that methodologies will be adapted from the food industry and tissue engineering research. However, the existing analytical techniques do not translate in a straightforward way to the needs of CM. Meat analysis for the food industry primarily assesses nutrition and safety, with little to no information about cell types and tissue structure. Metrics for assessing quality are often crude, qualitative visual measures. Conversely, characterizing engineered tissues grown in scientific laboratories provides information on cells and tissue, but the techniques rely on expensive reagents and equipment, and are often labor-intensive.

Proposed solution

There is an opportunity for an analytical reagents company or contract research organization to enter this space, either to directly conduct the required analyses or to manufacture laboratory equipment and assay kits to sell to CM companies for in-house testing. We anticipate that the types of assessments may include: nutritional content, safety (for example, testing for presence of toxins and dangerous microbes), mechanical properties, types of cells present, cell density and viability, cell and tissue structure (such as length and alignment of myofibers), and amount and structure of muscle-specific proteins.

To conduct these analyses, it would be beneficial to scale-down the required sample sizes for standard meat analysis testing, and to streamline or bundle laboratory-based assays like Western blots, qPCR, and immunohistochemical staining and microscopy to provide holistic characterization inexpensively and with minimal handling. Some high-throughput microscopy platforms already exist, but these are expensive and could potentially be adapted to the needs of CM producers. This could be accomplished by performing the analysis of all relevant markers within one culture plate or kit, automating image analysis of myotubes and cell coverage, and adapting these analyses for different types of 3D culture systems.

Anticipated impact

Enabling cultivated meat companies to characterize and assess the quality of their products in a cost-effective, standardized way will be hugely impactful for both companies and regulators. The use of thorough and consistent analytical tools, if adopted by all or most CM companies, could facilitate the pathway to regulatory approval. If no entity decides to enter this opportunity space to streamline analysis efforts, the existing CM companies will still conduct a variety of analyses, but they will be more expensive and variable than they might be otherwise and they will require expending significant in-house resources in a duplicative manner. Addressing this need in a cost-effective way could prove both profitable and beneficial to the industry’s path toward market adoption. For the company that addresses this opportunity, there is also the potential to reach a broader variety of customers within the biotechnology industry and academic research institutions.

GFI resources

Scientists looking at a screen displaying animal cells and a dna double helix

Collaborative Researcher Directory

Use this directory to find scientific collaborators in the alternative protein field.

Lab partners looking in microscope

Find collaborators

Join the GFIdeas global community of 2,000+ entrepreneurs, scientists, investors, and subject matter experts. Discuss projects on the members-only Slack community, attend monthly seminars, and use the community directory to help you find collaborators working on similar Solutions!

  • Cultivated icon Cultivated

Species-specific genomic studies enabling assay development for regulatory standards and cell line optimization

A suite of assays and genomic knowledge exists for humans and commonly used laboratory species such as mice or fruit flies. However, the same species-specific infrastructure does not exist equally…

Read more
  • Cultivated icon Cultivated

Development and industry-wide adoption of standards for meat characterization

A more comprehensive understanding of the processes, structures, and molecular constituents governing meat’s organoleptic properties will inform the production of alternative proteins.

Read more
  • Cultivated icon Cultivated
  • Fermentation icon Fermentation
  • Plant-based icon Plant-Based

Establishing intellectual property pooling frameworks

Intellectual property pools and patent pledges can help member companies contribute to a suite of patents that can be licensed within the pool.

Read more
Female scientist doing alternative protein research in a lab

Explore the full solutions database

Browse 300+ startup ideas, commercial opportunities, research projects, and investment priorities throughout the alternative protein supply chain.

Get involved

If you’d like to fund a research project, work on any of these solutions, share information about related efforts that are already underway, or elevate new ideas for advancing the alternative protein industry, we’d love to hear from you!