One of the world’s greatest logistical challenges is addressing how to feed a growing population given the current vulnerabilities to socioeconomic disturbances, including global pandemics and climate change, that contribute to food insecurity. While animal production systems remain a critical component of the world’s food supply, ecological limits will prevent the production of enough meat to satisfy the impending demand.
An estimated 800 million people already face hunger today and about 2 billion are food insecure [1]. It is becoming increasingly clear that equitably feeding the global population requires more diversity in the protein supply chain. One solution is biomanufacturing cell-cultured meat to reduce dependency on land, livestock, and climate for food production.
Cell-cultured meat refers to the manufacture of animal tissue (i.e., predominately skeletal muscle) in a controlled lab or factory environment by growing animal cells into an edible tissue construct. Typically, the goal is to produce structures that are molecularly indistinct from conventional meat and its organoleptic properties (taste and texture). Even with worldwide attention on recent proof-of-concept advances (e.g., Good Meat, the cultivated meat division of Eat Just) that have ground or homogeneous textures, the ability to affordably manufacture complex co-cultured, heterogenous, and anisotropic meat constructs, and the accompanying production systems, remain grand challenges in the cell-cultured meat industry.
The state-of-the-art science in biomanufacturing cell-cultured protein constructs was founded on tissue engineering fundamentals from the biomedical field. Production rates and quality using existing biomanufacturing tools are too slow and insufficient for large-scale manufacturing to feed global populations.
The cost of cultured ground products is currently estimated to be $150-$200 per kilogram, whereby culture media comprises 70%-80% of that cost [2]. More complex tissue constructs, such as an A5 Wagyu ribeye, require more advanced co-culturing techniques and complex scaffolds that are expected to cost several times more than cultured ground meat per kilogram. Therefore, new and efficient biomanufacturing processes and biomaterials are needed to achieve cost parity with conventional meat.
Mass production of constructs with predesigned organoleptic properties remains a major technical barrier. Innovation is slow because costly and time-consuming culturing is needed where well-established protocols do not exist. Of particular interest is understanding how scaffold architecture (shape, density, (an)isotropy, heterogeneity) and material composition affect mechanical cues that drive cellular behavior and organoleptic properties [3].
Current methods to produce scaffolds require timescales ranging from hours to weeks. Because the desired production volume needed for cell-cultured meat is millions of kilograms per day, the time required to manufacture scaffolds must be on the order of seconds to achieve economies of scale.
Common methods to biomanufacture scaffolds include self assembly, decellularization/recellularization, molding (e.g., freeze drying/lyophilization or injection molding), bioprinting, and electrospinning. Self assembly relies on a high cell concentration to aggregate and form tissue. The process replicates embryogenesis and has the potential to create complex tissue structures on a microscale; however, the ability to manufacture large tissue constructs is limited. Decellularization/recellularization refers to when a full organ or tissue is cleaned to remove cellular material, then recellularized with the desired cell source. The advantage is the ability to accurately mimic native environments. The disadvantage is that this approach requires donor tissue to act as a scaffold and is difficult to scale up. Injection molding refers to injecting a cell-laden hydrogel into a standard or custom mold.
Although semi-complex, 3D geometries are producible, this approach is limited to one material and cell type to achieve heterogeneous and anisotropic tissue construct, and it is difficult to incorporate porosity and/or vascularization. Other processes are either slow, expensive, or have difficulty with controlling and maintaining architecture. Lastly, bioprinting refers to building cell-laden, 3D constructs based on a geometrical representation.
Additive techniques enable more control over scaffold architecture and composition; however, extrusion, inkjet, and sintering are point-based deposition techniques that are inherently slower than 2D- and 3D-vat polymerization techniques. However, the use of 2D- and 3D-photolithographic bioprinting could potentially achieve the necessary production volumes enabling economies of scale.
Michael Sealy, a 2020 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer, was recognized with the 2022 David Dornfeld Manufacturing Vision Award for his presentation on “Feeding the Future through Convergent Manufacturing.” The award identifies long-term challenges and new visionary ideas for manufacturing that will influence the future of manufacturing research and education in the U.S. Authors will present their abstracts during SME’s annual North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC).
The competition is judged by a panel of industry and government experts, including federal program officers interested in new concepts for large, multi-project manufacturing research programs with relevance to their missions. These ideas are often described as radical, outrageous, transformational, unconventional, and breakthrough.
The award is named after the late University of California at Berkley professor, SME Fellow/member and past international director of the SME Board of Directors, David Dornfeld, PhD, FSME. Dornfeld was considered a global leader in sustainable and smart manufacturing. In his honor, the award recognizes outstanding vision and leadership within the manufacturing community.
The seventh-annual NSF Manufacturing Blue Sky Competition, funded by the National Science Foundation and the SME David Dornfeld Manufacturing Vision Award, will be held during NAMRC 51 and ASME’s Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC), June 12-16 at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
NAMRC 51 has seven separate tracks:
To register, visit namrc.sme.org.
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