Research project
36 | monthsECELL_FOOD

Development of an eco-sustainable biotechnological process for production of alternative source of proteins: cellular agriculture for novel food

Related toSpoke 03

Principal investigators
Federica Cheli

Other partecipantsTamil Selvi Sundaram
  1. Home

     / 
  2. Research projects

     / 
  3. Development of an eco-sustainable biotechnological process for product...

Project partners

Task involved

Task 3.2.3.

New breeding techniques like genome editing will be used to produce customised safety food and to generate lines with an improved nutritional profile covering both compounds with beneficial properties and reducing anti-nutritional components. Biotechnological processes will be used to eliminate toxic compounds to produce new food/beverages from novel substrates. Tailored (bio)technological approaches will be set up to valorise alternative protein sources (i.e., cricket powder, micro- and macro-algae, single cell proteins, and yeast biomasses, agri-food and fishery by-products, insect-based foods. Set- up of a safe system of cellular agriculture for the development of novel food, like cultured meat and cheese in connection with Spoke 2 and 4)

Project deliverables

D3.2.3.2.

Protocol for the development of novel and innovative food/beverages (M36)

D3.2.3.3.

Development of cultured meat and cheese products and identification of safety risks in production process (M36)

State of the art

The global population growth and the high pressure on resources is expected to double in the coming decades, with a growing demand of sustainable proteins of animal origin, especially meat and fish but also dairy products. In 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that global demand for meat is expected to reach 455 million tons by 2050, an increase of 76% from 2005(FAO, 2020). One of the world’s most pressing challenges is to produce meat, fish and dairy products in a way that reduces their environmental impacts. 
Cellular agriculture consists in producing food products, such as meat, from individual cells with the priority to manufacture products comparable to traditional products. The cellular agriculture technology has been previously considered for space applications. Cultured meat and fish are already produced by several start-up but the technology, methods, procedure, and identification of safety risks are not published, nor available in scientific literature.

Operation plan

The activities will focus on: 

  • Optimization of cell growth and maintenance for lab-scale production of synthetic meat/milk constructs: set up of culture conditions for muscle, adipose and mammary gland cells. Myoblast cell line C2C12, 3T3-L1 preadipocytes, MAC-T and/or BME-UV1 will be used as models of muscle cells, adipose cells, and mammary gland, respectively.  Several food grade by-products (eg. Whey serum, whey protein, plant-based hydrolysates) will be tested as alternative to FBS. 
  • Establishment of co-culture model to study muscle tissue formation (C2C12 and 3T3-L1) and milk production (MACT-T/BME-UV1 and 3T3-L1). Following co-culture, expression of adipogenic and myogenic genes, and cellular secretome will be assessed. 
  • Establishment and set-up of culture conditions for primary cells.
  • 3D bio-printing will be used to design scaffold for cell seeding and appropriate differentiation. 

Expected results

In order to develop protocols to produce cell-based novel food, the expected results of the proposal will be:   

  • Definition of the best culture and safety conditions for C2C12 and 3T3-L1 and mammary gland cell to reduce or totally replace the use of FBS in cellular agriculture studies.
  • Use environmentally sustainable functional feed ingredients for cellular agriculture applications to enrich culture media to feed cells.
  • Select edible inks based on by products to develop an optimized formulation to make edible scaffolds suitable for cultured meat.