GabyA team led by Professor Seiji Takeuchi at the University of Tokyo has grown 11-gram pieces of chicken in the lab and says the product could reach the market in 5–10 years.
They grew nugget-sized pieces using a device that supplied oxygen and nutrients through a thousand thin hollow fibers to chicken muscle cells embedded in a gel. The technology produced pieces about 2 cm long and 1 cm thick.
The team says the fiber bioreactor could enable cultivation of larger pieces of chicken, beef, pork, and fish in the lab. The technology may even be used to grow functional organs, The Guardian reported.
What else should be known about this discovery?
The main obstacle to growing meat in the lab is delivering enough nutrients and oxygen to muscle cells in thick tissue layers—without them the cells die. For that reason, most projects focus on producing small pieces that resemble ground meat.
To address this, Professor Takeuchi’s team built a bioreactor that holds living cells in a gel and nourishes them through thin semipermeable fibers that run through the material.
“One of the main problems in growing thick tissue is that the cells in the center may struggle to receive enough oxygen and nutrients, which can lead to cell death. Our system has helped solve this problem by providing internal perfusion, allowing us to grow thicker, more uniform tissue,” said Professor Takeuchi.
In a paper in the journal Trends in Biotechnology, the team described their invention and said that growing larger, more structured pieces would let scientists better replicate the texture and appearance of chicken breast or thigh. “Cultivated ground meat is easier to produce. But it does not fully reproduce the fibrous structure and taste that consumers expect from conventional meat,” the lead researcher said.
So far, the hollow fibers of the artificial circulatory system have to be removed manually after the meat grows. However, scientists plan to replace them with edible cellulose fibers that can be left in and used to improve the meat’s texture.
According to Professor Takeuchi, future versions of the bioreactor may require artificial blood that carries more oxygen to the cells and helps grow larger pieces of meat.
“At first, this meat will likely be more expensive than regular chicken, particularly because of material and production costs. However, we are actively developing scalable food systems and, if successful, we expect the cost to decrease significantly over time,” said Professor Takeuchi.
Meanwhile, Professor Derek Stewart from the James Hutton Institute in the U.K. said lab-grown meat could be fortified by adding zinc and selenium to the growth medium. He suggested that could help boost immunity in older adults.
