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)旨在满足世界对高质量蛋白质的日益增长的需求，这些蛋白质是营养、美味、负担得起、安全、可持续和符合道德的。肉类需求上升，同时人们对气候变化和环境退化的担忧与日俱增，突显出生产传统动物产品的替代方法的必要性。细胞培养、发酵和食品科学为开发这些替代品提供了强大的工具。具体地说，通过细胞培养生产肉类和乳制品等动物产品，而不是从整个动物中生产，有可能将消费者所需的动物产品与集约化畜牧业的负面外部性脱钩。这种生产模式(称为“细胞农业”)可以改善我们食品系统的弹性、可持续性、健康、安全和可获得性。CACM专注于结合学术界和工业界的力量、能力和资源，以解决可持续和可扩展的细胞农业产品生产面临的一些最大问题。该中心将探讨各种主题，从生产的原材料投入、最大限度地提高效率的工艺设计、包括营养和感官体验在内的产品质量指标、食品安全、环境影响、生产经济学和消费者的期望。具体的研究重点将与一系列行业利益相关者的投入一起确定，并将解决推动该领域发展的最紧迫的研究领域。此外，该中心将继续开展活动，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(例如生物、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、食品安全和消费者兴趣)的员工队伍。通过这些活动，CACM将把这一不断增长的领域培育成一个可持续、健康和有吸引力的食品体系。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)增进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使能技术。这些方法将包括生物工程(例如，开发肉类产品的组织支架)、化学工程(例如，通过细胞培养开发用于生产肉类、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加工植物投入物)和细胞生物学(例如，开发细胞系或大规模培养的培养基)。第二个研究重点将集中在提高蜂窝农产品的质量上。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，第三个重点将集中在了解细胞农业产品对环境、健康和社会的影响。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。这些努力将汇聚在一起，加速发展细胞农业，使其成为一种可获得、可持续、公平和理想的粮食生产系统。CACM的中心是塔夫茨大学，该大学是美国最大的学术培养肉研究实验室的所在地，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人类营养老龄化研究中心)以及马萨诸塞州波士顿作为生命科学研究中心的地位相结合，使CACM成为推动细胞农业和培养肉类开发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智力优势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.