Researchers have made what they say is a breakthrough in cultivated meat after they successfully produced nugget-sized pieces of chicken in a lab.
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes
A bioreactor with the ability to mimic blood vessels like those in a natural circulatory system can deliver oxygen and nutrients to artificial tissue. This enables the production of more than 10 grams of chicken to be used in cultured meat applications.
“Our study presents a scalable, top-down strategy for producing whole-cut cultured meat using a perfusable hollow fiber bioreactor,” said senior author of the study Shoji Takeuchi, a project professor with the University of Tokyo, as Cell Press reported. “This system enables cell distribution, alignment, contractility, and improved food-related properties. It offers a practical alternative to vascular-based methods and may impact not only food production but also regenerative medicine, drug testing, and biohybrid robotics.”
One of the major obstacles to reconstructing large-scale tissues is creating well-distributed vascular networks, since diffusion alone isn’t enough to sustain cells across significant distances. Tissue thickness in the absence of an integrated circulatory system has been mostly less than a millimeter. This makes it difficult to produce tissues that are a centimeter or larger in size with densely packed cells.
“We’re using semipermeable hollow fibers, which mimic blood vessels in their ability to deliver nutrients to the tissues,” Takeuchi said. “These fibers are already commonly used in household water filters and dialysis machines for patients with kidney disease. It’s exciting to discover that these tiny fibers can also effectively help create artificial tissues and, possibly, whole organs in the future.”
The researchers used a Hollow Fiber Bioreactor (HFB) with 50 hollow fibers to demonstrate the biofabrication of one-centimeter skeletal muscle tissues in chicken. They also used a robot-assisted assembly system to make a 1,125-fiber HFB, which was able to produce over 10 grams of whole-cut chicken meat using chicken fibroblast cells — those that make up connective tissue.
“Cultured meat offers a sustainable, ethical alternative to conventional meat,” Takeuchi said. “However, replicating the texture and taste of whole-cut meat remains difficult. Our technology enables the production of structured meat with improved texture and flavor, potentially accelerating its commercial viability.”
Takeuchi said future research challenges include adapting the technology for use in organ fabrication as well as biohybrid robotics; determining how perfusion affects tissue quality in the long-term; and making additional improvements on the structural integrity and mechanical properties of the tissue so that it better mimics natural muscle tissue.
“We overcame the challenge of achieving perfusion across thick tissues by arranging hollow fibers with microscale precision,” Takeuchi said. “Remaining challenges include improving oxygen delivery in larger tissues, automating fiber removal, and transitioning to food-safe materials. Solutions may include the use of artificial oxygen carriers to mimic red blood cells, bundle-removal mechanisms that efficiently remove fibers in a single operation, and edible or recyclable hollow fibers.”
The study, “Scalable tissue biofabrication via perfusable hollow fiber arrays for cultured meat applications,” was published in the journal Trends in Biotechnology.
“The potential to produce large-scale tissue-engineered organs with accurate tissue morphology and function has numerous applications. For instance, large-scale skeletal muscles with densely packed myotubes could offer a novel solution for cellular agriculture, addressing food and environmental issues,” the authors of the findings wrote.
Researchers believe that the hollow fiber bioreactor is a stepping stone to making whole cuts of chicken, fish, beef and other lab-grown meats. The technology could also potentially be used to produce functional organs, reported The Guardian.
“This looks like a transformative step, it’s a really elegant solution,” said Professor Derek Stewart with the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, as The Guardian reported. “They’ve created something of a size and scale that people are hardwired to eat: it’s the chicken nugget model.”
