Chinese scientists say lab-grown meatballs are ready for mass production
- Researchers from Tsinghua University and Nanjing Agricultural University report their innovation may pave the way for cultured meat to be industrialised
- They compared their cultured meat with Chinese pork meatballs and found it to be substantially higher in protein and lower in fat
A research team in China said it had developed a new “cell factory” to accelerate the expansion of lab-grown animal cells, making it possible to industrialise cultured meat.
Cultured meat technology – which grows genuine meat by cultivating animal cells in a lab – is seen as a promising alternative for producing healthier and more sustainable protein.
It requires a large number of cells to form cultured meat products, but how to culture the cells on a large scale remains a problem.
Researchers from Tsinghua University and Nanjing Agricultural University say they have developed an edible, 3D porous gelatin micro-carrier as a cell expansion scaffold.
Using the micro-carrier, they found cell expansion increased 20-fold in seven days. That compares to less than 10-fold expansion over the same period in previous studies.
The authors cultured pig muscle cells and fat cells separately before putting them together into a 3D-printed mould. With the help of an enzyme they created centimetre-scale meatballs.