IUCRC Planning Grant Tufts University: Center for Cellular Agriculture and Cultured Meat (CACM)

细胞农业和培养肉类中心（CACM）旨在满足世界对营养，美味，负担得起，安全，可持续和道德的高品质蛋白质日益增长的需求。肉类需求的不断增长，加上对气候变化和环境退化的日益关注，凸显了对生产传统动物产品的替代方法的需求。细胞培养、发酵和食品科学为开发这些替代品提供了强有力的工具。具体来说，通过细胞培养生产肉类和奶制品等动物产品，而不是从整个动物中生产，就有可能将消费者需求的动物产品与集约化动物农业的负外部性脱钩。这种生产模式（称为“细胞农业”）可以改善我们粮食系统的复原力、可持续性、健康、安全和可获得性。CACM致力于结合学术界和工业界的优势、能力和资源，以解决细胞农业产品可持续和可扩展生产所面临的一些最大问题。该中心将探讨的主题包括生产的原材料投入，工艺设计以最大限度地提高效率，产品质量指标，包括营养和感官体验，食品安全，环境影响，生产经济学和消费者需求。具体的研究重点将根据一系列行业利益相关者的意见确定，并将解决推进该领域最紧迫的研究领域。此外，该中心将开展活动，吸引人才到这个快速增长和高度跨学科的行业，建立一支包括STEM工人的劳动力队伍（例如，生物学、化学工程和食品科学），农业（例如，厨师，农民和经济学家），和政策（例如，食品政策、食品安全和消费者利益）。通过这些活动，CACM将促进这一不断增长的领域朝着可持续，健康和有吸引力的食品系统发展。CACM将专注于三个主要研究方向：1）推进细胞农业生产技术，3）提高细胞农业产品的质量，3）提高我们对细胞农业产品的理解。其中第一项将侧重于开发可用于降低成本和提高生产规模的赋能技术。这些方法将包括生物工程（例如，开发用于肉制品的组织支架），化学工程（例如，开发用于通过细胞培养生产肉、奶和其它产品的生物反应器），食品科学（例如，用于培养系统或细胞农业产品的加工植物基投入物），和细胞生物学（例如，开发用于大规模培养的细胞系或培养基）。第二个研究重点将集中在提高细胞农业产品的质量。这里的方法将包括细胞工程，营养和感官评价和食品加工/科学。最后，第三个重点将集中在了解细胞农业产品的环境，健康和社会影响。方法将包括生命周期和技术经济评估、营养评估、食品安全评估和消费者接受度研究。这些努力将共同加速细胞农业的发展，使其成为一种可获得的、可持续的、公平的和理想的粮食生产系统。CACM以塔夫茨大学为中心，塔夫茨大学是美国最大的学术培养肉类研究实验室以及弗里德曼营养学院的所在地。文理学院资源（生物医学和化学工程设施，专业知识和劳动力）与弗里德曼学院相结合（营养评估设施，专业知识，劳动力，和美国农业部的人类营养研究中心的老龄化），以及波士顿，马萨诸塞州作为一个中心的生命科学研究，联合收割机使CACM成为促进细胞农业和培养肉类发展的合作研究的领导者。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Center for Cellular Agriculture and Cultured Meat (CACM) aims to address the world’s growing need for high quality proteins that are nutritious, delicious, affordable, safe, sustainable, and ethical. Rising meat demand, juxtaposed with increasing concern over climate change and environmental degradation, highlights the need for alternative methods of producing conventional animal products. Cell culture, fermentation, and food science offer powerful tools for developing these alternatives. Specifically, by producing animal products such as meat and dairy through cell culture—rather than from whole animals, it is possible to decouple the animal products that consumers demand from the negative externalities of intensive animal agriculture. Such a production paradigm (termed “Cellular Agriculture”) could improve our food system’s resilience, sustainability, health, safety and accessibility. The CACM is focused on combining the strengths, capacity, and resources of academia and industry to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the sustainable and scalable production of cellular agriculture products. The Center will explore topics ranging from raw material inputs for production, process designs to maximize efficiency, product quality metrics including nutrition and sensory experience, food safety, environmental impacts, production economics, and consumer desirability. Specific research thrusts will be determined with input from a range of industry stakeholders and will address the most pressing research areas for advancing the field. Additionally, the Center will pursue activities to draw in talent to this rapidly growing and highly interdisciplinary industry, building a workforce which encompasses workers from STEM (e.g., biology, chemical engineering, and food science), agriculture (e.g., chefs, farmers, and economists), and policy (e.g., food policy, food safety, and consumer interest). Through these activities, the CACM will foster this growing field towards a food system that is sustainable, healthy, and attractive.The CACM will focus on three main research thrusts: 1) advancing technologies for cellular agriculture production, 3) advancing the quality of cellular agriculture products, and 3) advancing our understanding of cellular agriculture products. The first of these will focus on developing enabling technologies that can be used to lower the cost and improve the scale of production. The approaches will include bioengineering (e.g., developing tissue scaffolds for meat products), chemical engineering (e.g., developing bioreactors for producing meat, milk, and other products through cell culture), food science (e.g., processing plant-based inputs for culture systems or cellular agriculture products), and cell biology (e.g., developing cell lines or media for large scale culture). The second research thrust will focus on enhancing the quality of cellular agriculture products. Approaches here will include cell engineering, nutrition and sensory evaluation and food processing/science. Finally, the third thrust will focus on understanding the environmental, health, and societal impacts of cellular agriculture products. Approaches will include life-cycle and techno-economic assessment, nutrition evaluation, food-safety evaluation, and consumer acceptance studies. Together, these thrusts will converge to accelerate the development of cellular agriculture as an accessible, sustainable, equitable, and desirable food production system. The CACM is centered at Tufts University, which is home to the largest academic cultured meat research lab in the US, as well as the Friedman School of Nutrition. The resources of the school of Arts Science and Engineering (biomedical and chemical engineering facilities, expertise, and workforce) combined with those of the Friedman School (nutrition evaluation facilities, expertise, workforce, and the USDA’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging), as well as the position of Boston, MA as a hub for life-science research, combine to equip the CACM as a leader in collaborative research for advancing cellular agriculture and cultured meat development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.