SBIR-STTR Award

Cultivated meat has the potential to lower GHG emissions (55-92% in beef)decrease resource use (60% less land use in chicken) and improve health outcomes. However these benefits can only be realized if cultivated meat is manufactured and adopted at scale. The goal of this project is to a) enable cost-efficient scalable biomass production and b)improve product quality by demonstrating cell-driven texture. It is critical to maximize bioreactor yield as it drives down media costs and capital expenditure requirements. To this end we have developed a 3D cellular encapsulation method (BioBlocks) where cells are seeded in to spherical hydrogels that support the proliferation and spreading of muscle stem cells and protects cells from shear stresses in the bio reactor. Phase I aims to match best-in-class 1% viable cell volume satun optimized bench-scale and sets the foundation to drive a further~40x increase following bio process optimization. We will do so by evaluating cell phenotype across different extra cellular matrix hydrogels particle stiffnesses and stress relaxation times. To enable cell-driven texture we have developed a scalable method capable of patterning per fusable vascular net works in a high through put manner. This allows us to maintain cellular viability in thick cellularly dense tissues allowing viable cells to mature and fuse with their neighbors to replicate muscle fiber architecture. In this project we aim to generate tissues with 15 Kpa stiffness ~50% the stiffness of fish and will do so by tuning particle stiffness and fluid dynamics in our vasculature system to optimize cell viability and spreading.