New advances have been made in cell culture of meat

A multi-disciplinary team at the National University of Singapore has developed a new method to grow cellular meat by stimulating animal muscle cells with low-energy magnetic pulses, simplifying the previous production process. The technology has the advantages of being safer, non-invasive and cost-effective. Proteins secreted in this way can also be used in regenerative medicine. The results are published in the journal Biomaterials.

Cell culture meat is the use of biotechnology such as cell culture engineering and tissue engineering to grow animal muscle tissue as food material in vitro. Compared with traditional meat production methods, which consume large amounts of food, water and environmental pollution, cell-grown meat can skip the feeding and slaughter process and simply complete the production of animal protein. As such, it has numerous advantages, such as satisfying human health needs and being environmentally friendly. There are downsides, of course.

In the current process of growing cell meat, animal cells are commonly injected with fetal bovine serum (FBS) to help them grow and reproduce. Fetal bovine serum, obtained from fetal cows delivered by cesarean section, is a crucial and costly part of the current process of producing cellular meat, with numerous molecules derived from the muscle of slaughtered animals. However, scientists do not yet understand how to stimulate the release of these molecules in mass-produced bioreactors. Current methods, which use drugs or rely on genetic engineering, are inefficient and costly, limiting the scale of production and hindering commercial distribution of cellular meat.

In this new study, the team investigated the potential of short exposure to a low-energy magnetic pulsed magnetic field (PEMF) to induce a muscle secretion group to promote myogenesis in vitro. The researchers first used mouse myoblasts (C2C12) and then immortalized primary porcine myoblasts. Within as little as 10 minutes of exposure to PEMF, cells release a large number of molecules with regenerative, metabolic, anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties. They are part of the muscle secretory proteome and are needed for cell growth, survival and development into tissue.

The researchers found that magnetic enhancement of myogenesis in vitro and in vivo was associated with co-activation of mitochondrial production by the coactivator PGC-1α transcription. A key player in these magnetic growth-promoting responses is the transient receptor potential 1 (TRPC1) calcium permeation channel, whose expression and function are required to induce magnetic stimulation of chondrogenesis, neurogenesis, and myogenesis. The reintroduction of TRPC1 in the TRPC1-knocked-out skeletal muscle cell line restored magnetically induced mitochondrial respiration and enhanced myogenesis.

The researchers claim that the proteomes secreted by PEMF-induced cell growth can be safely, easily and cheaply obtained in the laboratory. Myogenic stem cells will act as a sustainable green bioreactor, providing nutrient-rich secretions for cell growth that can be used to mass produce cellular meat products..The secreted proteomes obtained in this study may also be useful in regenerative medicine..The team used secreted proteomes to treat unhealthy cells and found they helped speed up the recovery and growth of unhealthy cells..So this approach could potentially help heal damaged cells and speed up patient recovery. The safe and non-invasive low-energy magnetic pulse magnetic field technology platform developed by the team is capable of rapidly producing muscle secretions and therefore has a wide range of clinical and commercial applications.