Abstract:

Cultured meat technology aims to manufacture meat by exvivo culture of animal cells, which has emerged as a promising alternative for livestock meat production. Raising animals for meat production have led to some negative effects like global public health, environmental pollution, energy consumption, and animal welfare concerns. Compared to conventional animal agriculture, cultured meat is more sustainable, environmentally friendly, nutrition precision, and it can lessen the animal welfare concerns in the future. Although cultured meat is considered to supple or even replace conventional meat, it is still in its early stages and faces many challenges which need to be resolved before being on the market. Muscle is a well-organized but also intrinsically complex tissue. Benefiting from the extensive research on tissue engineering, it has already been successfully used for generation of bio-artificial muscles to repair muscle injury, but it has never been used for generation of meat. To fully mimic conventional meat's texture, flavor and nutritional properties, applications of tissue engineering technology and biomaterials are required. This review details the benefits and challenges of cultured meat with regard to isolation and purification of stem cells, long-term and large-scale culture of stem cells in an undifferentiated state, and efficient myogenic differentiation of stem cells. Given the vital important role that biomaterials play in fabricating muscle fibers, this review provides in-depth analysis of highlighting promising scaffold materials that can be applied to develop cultivated meat. Especially combining some precursors into edible synthetic scaffolds could create functional scaffolds that promote stem cell multilineage differentiation and thereby improve the flavor of the final meat product. Concluding remarks and future perspectives are also included for future research into scaffolds capable of supporting the growth of high-quality meat while minimizing production costs. In general, with increasing demand of meat and further development of technologies, cultured meat may ultimately act as a more healthy and sustainable choice.

Key words: cultured meat, cell culture, stem cell, biomaterials, biomanufacturing

摘要：

细胞培养肉是通过体外培养动物细胞后制造出来的肉类。相比传统畜肉类，其具有绿色可持续、营养可控、环境污染小等优势，是近年兴起的“科技食品”。但是，单纯依靠培养细胞得到的细胞培养肉并非真正意义上的肉，仅仅能被称为肉糜，其在外形、组织结构和口感上和传统肉类仍存在较大差距。近年，随着组织工程技术发展，生物材料在细胞培养肉生产中的应用也极大促进了该领域的发展，并为制造更接近真实肉类的细胞培养肉提供了有效途径。基于此，文章综述了细胞培养肉的优势和前景、细胞培养肉生产流程，重点总结了用于细胞培养肉生物材料的要求及分类、用于细胞培养肉的高分子材料、细胞培养肉用生物支架的工程化制备，并提出细胞培养肉未来发展的方向与挑战。旨在为细胞培养肉领域的技术发展提供参考。

关键词: 细胞培养肉, 细胞培养, 干细胞, 生物材料, 生物制造