Cell Types for Cultured Meat Production: Current Challenges and Recent Advances
Summary
The production of cultured meat, also known as cultivated meat or clean meat, involves
integrating biomaterials and cells with self-renewal and myogenic differentiation potential to
engineer meat in vitro for consumption. It is hoped that this innovative approach would
eliminate the need for intensive animal farming and slaughtering to produce animal proteins,
while being more sustainable, efficient and safe. The successful large-scale production of
cultured meat requires the development of an efficient production process, which partly
depends on the optimal performance of cells involved in the process, including high
proliferation rates, short cell doubling time, rapid and effective differentiation into muscle cells,
and consistent behavior over multiple passages. This review evaluates the potential of satellite
cells (SCs), mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), embryonic stem cells (ESCs), and induced
pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in cultured meat production and discusses the current
advancements and technical challenges related to their application. In addition, this review
highlights areas for further research and development to improve the efficiency and scalability
of the cultured meat production process through a review of scientific articles and relevant
patents filed by cultured meat companies.