Recycled Cellulose Scaffolds
Repurposing agricultural waste into scaffolds for cultured meat
Julian Cohen
Tufts University, United States
scaffold
Overview
Who: Julian Cohen, bachelor’s student in biophysics
When: 2020 – 2021
Institutes: Tufts University, United States
Supervisors: David Kaplan, professor and chair of biomedical engineering at Tufts University
Summary
Julian is creating scaffolds for cultured meat using cellulose, a common agricultural waste product. To increase the attachment of cells to his scaffold, Julian will also be coating the scaffolds with a two-sided protein: one side will have a cellulose binding domain (CBD) to attach to the cellulose scaffolds, the other side will have the binding motif RGD, which cells love to attach to.
Why This Matters
Repurposing agricultural waste to create scaffolds helps to offset the environmental impact of cultured meat even further. However, these materials are not always ideal for cell attachment. The addition of the protein coating will make the scaffolds more effective, anchoring the cells securely to the scaffold to grow and differentiate more easily.
More from Julian Cohen
Featured
December 2020
Announcing New Harvest’s 2020 Grantees, AnnouncementPublications
Engineering Carotenoid Production in Mammalian Cells for Nutritionally Enhanced Cell-Cultured Foods
Metabolic Engineering, 2020
