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

细胞农业和培养肉中心（ccm）旨在满足世界对营养、美味、价格合理、安全、可持续和道德的高品质蛋白质日益增长的需求。不断增长的肉类需求，再加上对气候变化和环境退化的日益关注，突显出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有力的工具。具体来说，通过细胞培养而不是从整个动物身上生产动物产品，如肉类和乳制品，有可能将消费者所需的动物产品与集约化动物农业的负面外部性分离开来。这种生产模式（称为“细胞农业”）可以提高我们粮食系统的弹性、可持续性、健康、安全和可及性。ccam致力于结合学术界和工业界的优势、能力和资源，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。该中心将探讨从原材料投入到生产，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，和消费者的期望等主题。具体的研究重点将根据一系列行业利益相关者的投入来确定，并将解决推进该领域最紧迫的研究领域。此外，该中心还将开展活动，为这个快速发展和高度跨学科的行业吸引人才，建立一支包括STEM（如生物学、化学工程和食品科学）、农业（如厨师、农民和经济学家）和政策（如食品政策、食品安全和消费者利益）等领域的人才队伍。通过这些活动，ccm将促进这一不断发展的领域朝着可持续、健康和有吸引力的粮食系统发展。ccam将专注于三个主要的研究重点：1)推进细胞农业生产的技术，3)提高细胞农业产品的质量，3)推进我们对细胞农业产品的理解。其中第一个重点是开发可用于降低成本和提高生产规模的使能技术。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类、牛奶和其他产品的生物反应器）、食品科学（例如，为培养系统或细胞农业产品处理基于植物的输入）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于提高细胞农业产品的质量。这里的方法将包括细胞工程、营养和感官评估以及食品加工/科学。最后，第三个推力将侧重于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。总之，这些重点将汇聚在一起，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。ccm以塔夫茨大学为中心，该大学拥有美国最大的学术培养肉研究实验室，以及弗里德曼营养学院。艺术科学与工程学院的资源（生物医学和化学工程设施、专业知识和劳动力）与弗里德曼学院的资源（营养评估设施、专业知识、劳动力和美国农业部的人类营养衰老研究中心）相结合，以及马萨诸塞州波士顿作为生命科学研究中心的地位，使ccam成为推动细胞农业和培养肉类发展的合作研究的领导者。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.