Creating cell-based meat that tastes and feels like muscle cuts from livestock has been one of the big challenges of the young industry. Now, a team of researchers at Harvard’s engineering school said they have grown rabbit and bovine muscle cells on edible gelatin ‘scaffolds’ that mimic the texture and consistency of naturally produced meat.
“This is our first effort to bring hard-core engineering design and scalable manufacturing to the creation of food,” said professor Kit Parker, senior author of the study, in a statement. Researchers used a process, inspired by cotton candy, called immersion Rotary Jet-Spinning to create long nanofibers of gelatin, a natural component of meat. The fibers played a role similar to the extracellular matrix that holds meat tissue together and contributes to its texture. Cells from rabbit and cattle muscles anchored themselves to the gelatin and grew in long, thin structures.
Mechanical testing found the cell-based and natural meats had comparable textures, but the natural meat had more muscle fibers, indicating it was more mature, said Luke MacQueen, an author of the study. “Muscle and fat cell maturation in vitro are still a really big challenge that requires progress in a number of areas,” he said.
Nonetheless, said Harvard, “this research shows that full lab-grown meat is possible.” The university said it was exploring the possibility of commercializing its research.
In an abstract, the researchers said, “Histology, scanning electron microscopy, and mechanical testing demonstrated that cultured muscle lacked the mature contractile architecture observed in natural muscle but recapitulated some of the structural and mechanical features measured in meat products.” The research appears in the journal Nature Science of Food and is available here.