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Background

To be commercially viable, the bioprocess needs to maximise production quantities (volume) while ensuring the optimal conversion of nutrients and resources (efficiency). Due to the vast scales required for cellular agriculture products to be commercially viable, this is likely to involve bioreactors of several to tens of thousands of litres in size.

 Research focus areas

  • Bioreactor design - there are a variety of different bioreactor types to consider for different products or different stages of their production. Some of these include stirred-tank, airlift, fixed-bed, hollow fibre, fluidised-bed, rocking-bed, single-use and/or novel adaptations of any of these. Many design aspects can be borrowed from existing large-scale cell culture industries such as those producing antibodies or pharmaceuticals, however, they must be optimised to suit cellular agriculture products. 

  • Cell suitability - bioreactor design also needs to consider the different cell types (needing a surface to adhere to or not), which stage of growth (proliferation/replication or differentiation into meat cell types) and the meat type (unformed sausage/mince or structured steaks). For example, unformed meats may only require large open stirred-tank bioreactor types (with or without microbeads for cells to attach to), whereas structured meats may require more complex vessels with internal structures to guide tissue formation.

  • Growth environment - to maintain the most optimal growth environment for cells, bioreactors will require automated sensing mechanisms to manage aspects such as nutrient concentration, temperature, O2 and CO2 levels, pH, and contamination. They will also need to ensure efficient delivery and recycling of media and sustainable processing of waste. 

  • Up and Downstream processes - upstream design considerations include maintaining sufficient cell numbers (called a seed train) to populate large bioreactors. Downstream aspects include tissue harvesting processes, post-harvest treatments, packaging and product provenance (traceability to donor cells).

The bioprocess encompasses many diverse challenges and will require input from a wide range of disciplines from cell biology to electrical engineering.