A Compilation of Our First 45 Publications, Part 4: Cells

Part IV is about the cells of cellular agriculture. These are the building blocks of the field!

Did you know that New Harvest has supported 45 peer-reviewed scientific publications in cellular agriculture?

As you know, building the scientific foundations of the field is a key part of our role as cellular agriculture ecosystem builders. That means funding fundamental, open research: the work that drives innovation, sparks follow-on government funding and investment, informs policymakers, and inspires the private sector.

Part IV is about the cells of cellular agriculture. These are the building blocks of the field!

Friendly reminder, a star (*) beside the link indicates that the paper is not open access, but most will be open access so that anyone – inside or outside of academia – can read it.

Not a scientist? We tried our absolute best to at least give you a vibe of what the papers are about in case something catches your eye.

PART IV: CELLS (in chronological order)

Did you know that insect cells are nutritious and easy to grow? They could be critical to advancing the science of cellular agriculture.
In fact, insect cells could be the key to scale!
It turns out that fish cells are a neglected but very high potential area for cellular agriculture. Fish cells have a unique set of properties that make them well-suited for cellular agriculture.
Imagine if you could eat meat and vegetables at the same time! This paper looks at how to make meat more nutritious.
Back to insects, here’s a thorough review of possible cell lines for insect cell culture.
The number of times a cell doubles is an important factor to understanding scale. This paper looks at how we increase the longevity of cells in culture.
This paper brings together a dream team of New Harvest fellows to review the future of cultured fat!
Insects have fat too, and it may be healthier than the fat in conventional meat*.

Corresponding Citations

Rubio, N. R., Fish, K. D., Trimmer, B. A., & Kaplan, D. L. (2019). In Vitro Insect Muscle for Tissue Engineering Applications. ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, 5(2), 1071–1082.
Rubio, N. R., Fish, K. D., Trimmer, B. A., & Kaplan, D. L. (2019). Possibilities for Engineered Insect Tissue as a Food Source. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 3, 24.
Rubio, N., Datar, I., Stachura, D., Kaplan, D., & Krueger, K. (2019). Cell-Based Fish: A Novel Approach to Seafood Production and an Opportunity for Cellular Agriculture. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 3, 43.
Stout, A. J., Mirliani, A. B., Soule-Albridge, E. L., Cohen, J. M., & Kaplan, D. L. (2020). Engineering carotenoid production in mammalian cells for nutritionally enhanced cell-cultured foods. Metabolic Engineering, 62, 126–137.
Rubio, N. R., McCartney, N. E., Trimmer, B. A., & Kaplan, D. L. (2020). Biofabrication with insect cells. Trends in Entomology, 16, 1-17.
Soice, E., & Johnston, J. (2021). Immortalizing Cells for Human Consumption. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 22(21), 11660.
Yuen Jr, J. S. K., Stout, A. J., Kawecki, N. S., Letcher, S. M., Theodossiou, S. K., Cohen, J. M., Barrick, B. M., Saad, M. K., Rubio, N. R., Pietropinto, J. A., DiCindio, H., Zhang, S. W., Rowat, A. C., & Kaplan, D. L. (2022). Perspectives on scaling production of adipose tissue for food applications. Biomaterials, 280, 121273.
Letcher, S. M., Rubio, N. R., Ashizawa, R. N., Saad, M. K., Rittenberg, M. L., McCreary, A., Ali, A., Calkins, O. P., Trimmer, B. A., & Kaplan, D. L. (2022). In vitro Insect Fat Cultivation for Cellular Agriculture Applications. ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, 8(9), 3785–3796.

With all this emerging work on the cells of cellular agriculture, it is interesting to note that the field doesn’t have a go-to “workhorse” cell for cultured meat research.

Definitely tons of room to grow in this space.

If you’d like to help us make all of these papers openly available, please donate to our Open Access Fund.