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.

工业化家畜养殖方法与不良的环境影响有关，包括温室气体排放、高水/土地使用以及过度使用抗生素和人畜共患病等动物福利/公共卫生问题。预计到2022年11月15日，全球人口将达到80亿，到2050年将达到100亿。有限的资源和不断增加的全球肉类消费为全球粮食不安全创造了条件。因此，肉类替代品的工业化需要具有成本效益的、颠覆性的营养蛋白生产技术创新。这种向**栽培肉**(**CM**)生产的转变将扰乱这个高度有价值的全球产业(2021年牛肉的价值为4670亿美元)。CM是在生物反应器中使用组织工程方法从动物干细胞培育出来的肉。干细胞在含有**生长因子**(**GF**)蛋白质的特殊营养丰富的细胞培养液中分化为肉类中存在的细胞类型，如肌肉和脂肪。这些细胞与支架结合形成肉制品。因此，CM是在受控环境中生产的，不需要饲养动物作为食物，从而减轻了与传统养殖相关的许多担忧。**然而，经济可行性和规模扩大是CM采用和公众接受的主要障碍。*关键成本驱动因素**是文化媒体的**GF组件**。现有的GF蛋白生产和分离方法(一个关键的纯化步骤)从实验室过渡到商业生产规模成本高昂。事实上，模型研究表明，目前使用生长因子成纤维细胞生长因子2生产CM的成本在每公斤50,000-400,000美元之间，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，我们才能接近每公斤2美元的商品价格。_**我们的愿景是瞄准这一瓶颈，使低成本生长因子生产能够大规模扩大，用于肉类种植**。为了生产低成本的GFs，我们将部署我们的基于植物的GF批量表达平台，并与新的低成本替代生物分离/纯化相结合。这是使用一种廉价的方法实现的，该方法利用可持续的商业可获得的工业食品级底物。中试数据表明，这是一种纯化生物活性高的粗蛋白提取物的有效方法。预计将大幅降低玻璃纤维生产的成本，产生深远的商业、经济、可持续性和环境影响。