Using macromolecular crowding to increase cellular meat production and feed a low-emission bioeconomy

3D生物组织有限公司(3DBT)是纽卡斯尔大学的一家分支公司，正在将细胞生物学和组织工程的最新发展转化为医疗和食品相关产品。该公司开发了一种生产高度组织化的胶原蛋白组织的工艺。这些工程组织与它们的天然对应组织在结构上的相似性是显著的，并允许显著改善所得到的组织的功能。例如，3DBT目前正在为皮肤和角膜替代物创造有组织的胶原组织，但最近表明，这一过程也与细胞肉有关。在降低生产这些组织的成本方面仍然存在挑战，特别是如果打算将其用作食品替代品(细胞肉必然必须是大众消费者负担得起的)，同时取消使用该过程中的动物来源成分。因此，该项目探索开发简单、廉价和容易获得的培养液补充剂来喂养培养细胞，并使组织的生产能够重现肉类的质地和成分，同时满足中心市场需求，即低价和无血清。欧洲、美国和其他地区的几个研究小组和公司正在开发无血清培养液替代方案，以提高细胞肉的生产。然而，这些策略大多侧重于寻找相关血清因子的天然和合成替代品。我们建议采取一种不同的方法，侧重于使用从现有农工业副产品中提取的新型补充剂。在培养基中使用这些物质将代表一种新的无动物/异物方法来提高细胞肉类生产的效率，这一战略旨在减少(甚至消除)血清补充的需要-使产品真正没有动物。最终，这项可行性研究的结果将与我们的组织生产方法相结合，提供一种新的体外系统，以生产高度组织的、多层次的牛肉、羊肉和猪肉的等价物，具有消费者了解和喜爱的质地和味道。因此，我们预计这些创新将直接解决细胞肉类市场的一些主要“痛苦”，即通过提供外观类似的天然产品，以较低的生产价格，不需要屠宰动物或使用抗生素来种植。最终，我们预计，普通消费者更多地采用细胞肉类将消除集约化饲养动物的需要，从而有助于降低全球温室气体排放。

3D Bio-Tissues Ltd (3DBT) is a Newcastle University spin-out company that is translating recent developments in cell biology and tissue engineering into medical and food-related products. The company has developed a process that produces highly organised collagenous tissue. The similarity in structure between these engineered tissues and their natural counterparts is remarkable and allows for significantly improved function of the resulting tissue. For example 3DBT is currently creating organised collagenous tissues for skin and corneal replacements, but has recently shown that this process is also relevant to cellular meat. A challenge remains in driving down the costs of producing these tissues, especially if intended as food alternatives (cellular meat will necessarily have to be affordable for mass consumers), while eliminating at the same time the use of animal-derived ingredients from the process. Thus, this project explores the development of simple, inexpensive, and readily-available media supplements to feed cells in culture and enable the production of tissues recreating the texture and composition of meat whilst meeting central market demands i.e. low price and absence of serum.Several research groups and companies in Europe, the US, and elsewhere are developing serum-free media alternatives for enhanced production of cellular meat. However, most of these strategies focus on finding natural and synthetic substitutes for the relevant serum factors. We propose to take a different approach that focuses on the use of novel supplements derived from existing agro-industrial by-products. Use of these in the culture medium will represent a new animal/xenobiotic-free method to increase the efficiency of cellular meat production, a strategy that aims to reduce (or even eliminate) the need for serum supplementation - making the product truly animal-free. Ultimately, the results from this feasibility study used in conjunction with our tissue production methods will deliver a new _in vitro_ system to produce highly-organised, multi-stratified equivalents to bovine, ovine, and porcine meat with a texture and taste that consumers know and love. We therefore expect these innovations to directly address some of the main 'pains' of the cellular meat market, namely by providing natural-looking products with similar characteristics, at a lower production price, and grown without the need of animal slaughter nor use of antibiotics. Ultimately, we expect that a greater adoption of cellular meat by general consumers will eliminate the need for intensive animal farming, thus contributing to lower greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.