Aggregating in vitro-grown adipocytes to produce macroscale cell-cultured fat tissue with tunable lipid compositions for food applications

Overview

Who: John Se Kit Yuen Jr, Michael K Saad, Ning Xiang, Brigid M Barrick, Hailey DiCindio, Chunmei Li, Sabrina W Zhang, Miriam Rittenberg, Emily T Lew, Kevin Lin Zhang, Glenn Leung, Jaymie A Pietropinto, David L Kaplan

Published: April 4, 2023

Where: eLife

Key Takeaway: A quick and easy way to form 3D fat tissues

Research Topics: cell

Summary

In this publication, John Yuen et al present a simple method of producing fat tissue for cultured meat that does not require 3D culture. 3D culture is challenging because nutrients and oxygen can’t diffuse into thick pieces of tissue without blood vessels. The authors grow fat cells in 2D, then form a bulk fat tissue during harvest using food-relevant binders. This technique is uniquely applicable to cellular agriculture, where cells do not need to remain alive after harvest. The resulting fat tissues have a similar texture to fat from animals when alginate is used as the binder. Adding lipids during culture improves the fatty acid composition of the resulting fat. Future work should investigate how the 3D culture could scale up, such as proliferation and differentiation in fixed bed bioreactors or suspension bioreactors using microcarriers.

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Yuen Jr, J. S. K., Saad, M. K., Xiang, N., Barrick, B. M., DiCindio, H., Li, C., ... & Kaplan, D. L. (2023). Aggregating in vitro-grown adipocytes to produce macroscale cell-cultured fat tissue with tunable lipid compositions for food applications. Elife, 12, e82120.

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