Cell Types for Cultured Meat Production: Current Challenges and Recent Advances

Abstract

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.