New advances in cell culture meattechnology

　　Recently, amultidisciplinary team at the National University of Singapore developed a newmethod for growing cellular meat by stimulating animal muscle cells throughexposure to low-energy magnetic pulse fields, simplifying the processpreviously used for cellular meat production. The technique offers theadvantages of being safer, non-invasive, and highly cost-effective. Thesecreted proteome extracted using this method can also be used in regenerativemedicine, and the research results were published in Biomaterials.

　　Cell culturemeat is the use of biotechnology, such as cell culture engineering and tissueengineering, to culture animal muscle tissue in vitro as an edible material.Compared with conventional meat production methods that consume large amountsof food and water resources and costly environmental pollution, cell-culturedmeat can directly skip the feeding and slaughtering process to complete theproduction of animal protein. Therefore, it has many advantages such as meetinghuman health needs and being environmentally friendly. Of course, it also hassome disadvantages.

　　The currentprocess of growing cellular meat usually requires the injection of fetal bovineserum (FBS) into animal cells to help them grow and reproduce. Fetal bovine serumis taken from fetal cows delivered by cesarean section, a critical andexpensive part of the current process for producing cellular meat, and many ofthe molecules come from the muscle of slaughtered animals. But scientists donot yet know how to stimulate the release of these molecules in a mass-producedbioreactor. Current methods using drugs or relying on genetic engineering areinefficient and costly, limiting the scale of production and hindering thecommercialization of cellular meat.

　　In this newstudy, the team investigated the potential of short exposure to a low-energymagnetic pulse magnetic field (PEMF) to induce muscle secretome to promote invitro myogenesis. The researchers first used mouse myogenic cells (C2C12) forthe experiments and then validated them with immortalized primary porcinemyogenic cells. In just 10 minutes of PEMF exposure, the cells released a largenumber of molecules with regenerative, metabolic, anti-inflammatory andimmune-enhancing properties. They are part of the muscle secretory proteome andare required for cell growth, survival and development into tissues.

　　The researchersfound that enhanced magnetic properties of myogenesis in vitro and in vivo wereassociated with co-activation of mitochondrial production by coactivator PGC-1αtranscription. A key player in these magnetic field pro-growth responses is thetransient receptor potential 1 (TRPC1) calcium-permeable channel, whoseexpression and function are required to induce magnetostimulation ofchondrogenesis, neurogenesis and myogenesis. Reintroduction of TRPC1 inskeletal muscle cell lines knocked out of TRPC1 restores magnetically inducedmitochondrial respiration and enhances myogenesis.

　　The secretedproteome of PEMF-induced cell growth can be safely, easily and inexpensivelyobtained in the laboratory, the researchers said. Myogenic stem cells willserve as a sustainable green bioreactor that provides nutrient-rich secretionsfor cell growth that can be used for large-scale production of cellular meat products.

　　The secretoryproteome obtained in this study could also be used in regenerative medicine.The team treated unhealthy cells using secretory proteomes and found that theyhelped accelerate the recovery and growth of unhealthy cells. Thus, this approachcould potentially help heal damaged cells and accelerate patient recovery. Thesafe and non-invasive low-energy magnetic pulse magnetic field technologyplatform developed by the team can rapidly generate muscle secretome andtherefore has a wide range of clinical and commercial applications.