Towards massive scale-up of low-cost growth factor production for meat cultivation

大规模扩大用于肉类种植的低成本生长因子生产

• 批准号: 10042925
• 金额: $ 6.32万
• 依托单位: OCCAM BIOSCIENCES LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Grant for R&D
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10042925
• 关键词: Towards; massive; scale; up; low

Industrial livestock farming methods are associated with undesirable environmental impacts including greenhouse gas emissions, high water/land usage, and animal welfare/ public health concerns such as overuse of antibiotics and zoonoses. The worldwide population is expected to reach 8 billion by 15/11/2022, and 10 billion by 2050\. Finite resources and increasing worldwide meat consumption create conditions for global food insecurity. Cost-effective, disruptive innovations in production technology for nutritional proteins are therefore required for the industrialization of meat alternatives. Such a shift to **cultivated meat** (**CM**) production will disrupt this highly valuable global industry ($467 billion for beef in 2021). CM is meat grown from animal stem cells in a bioreactor using tissue engineering approaches. Stem cells are differentiated into cell types found in meat such as muscle and fat in specialized nutrient-enriched cell culture medium containing **growth factor** (**GF**) proteins. These cells are combined with scaffolds to form meat products. Thus, CM is produced in a controlled environment without farming animals for food, mitigating many of the concerns associated with conventional farming. **However, economic feasibility and scale-up are major barriers to the adoption and public acceptance of CM.** **Key cost drivers** are the **GF components** of culture media. Existing GF protein production and separation methods (a critical purification step) are prohibitively expensive to transition from laboratory to commercial production scale. _Indeed, modelling studies show current CM production costs between $50,000-400,000USD per kg using the growth factor FGF-2, at a cost of $5,000/mg in a 20,000L bioreactor. Only by reducing FGF-2 to nominal costs can we approach commodity level prices of $2 per kg._ **Our vision is to target this bottleneck enabling massive scale-up of low-cost growth factor production for meat cultivation**. To generate low-cost GFs, we will deploy our plant-based GF bulk-expression platform, and combine with novel low-cost alternatives for bioseparation/purification. This is achieved using an inexpensive approach exploiting sustainable commercially-available industrial food-grade substrates. Pilot data has shown this is an effective method for purifying crude protein extracts with high recovery of biological activity. Significant cost reductions for GF production are envisaged, with profound commercial, economic, sustainability and environmental impacts.

工业牲畜种植方法与不良的环境影响有关，包括温室气体排放，高水/土地使用以及动物福利/公共卫生/公共卫生问题，例如过度使用抗生素和人畜共患病。预计到2022年11月15日，全球人口将达到80亿，到2050年\。有限的资源和增加全球肉类消费会为全球粮食不安全创造条件。因此，肉类替代品的工业化需要具有成本效益的营养蛋白生产技术创新。这样的转变为**栽培的肉**（** cm **）生产将破坏这一高价的全球行业（2021年的牛肉为4670亿美元）。 CM是使用组织工程方法从生物反应器中的动物干细胞中生长的肉。干细胞分化为在富含**生长因子**（** gf **）蛋白质的富含营养富集的细胞培养基中发现的肉类中发现的细胞类型，例如肌肉和脂肪。这些细胞与脚手架结合在一起，形成肉类产品。因此，CM是在受控的环境中生产的，而无需耕种动物以供食物耕种，从而减轻了与常规农业相关的许多担忧。 **然而，经济可行性和扩大规模是对CM采用和公众接受的主要障碍。现有的GF蛋白质产生和分离方法（临界纯化步骤）的过渡到从实验室到商业生产规模的过渡非常昂贵。 _表示，建模研究表明，使用增长因子FGF-2，当前的CM生产成本在每公斤50,000-400,000 USD之间，在20,000升生物反应器中的成本为5,000美元/毫克。只有通过将FGF-2降低到名义成本，我们才能将商品水平的价格达到每公斤2美元的价格。为了产生低成本的GF，我们将部署基于植物的GF大量表达平台，并与新型的低成本替代品相结合，以进行生物释放/纯化。这是使用廉价的方法来实现的，利用可持续的市售工业食品级底物来实现。试验数据表明，这是一种具有高恢复生物学活性的粗蛋白提取物的有效方法。设想GF生产的大幅降低成本，并产生深远的商业，经济，可持续性和环境影响。