The project funded by the Good Food Institute brings together experts in colloidal and polymer gel scaffolds, nanomaterial design, electrochemistry, and liposome delivery vehicles

Picture: A team of chemical and biomolecular engineering researchers at Lehigh University will use human tissue engineering technology to "bring" meat in the laboratory. From left, Associate Professor Kelly Schultz; Steven McIntosh, Professor and Dean; Angela Brown, Associate Professor; and Mark A. Snyder, Associate Professor. see more 

"I joked that we want to breed chicken nuggets," said Steve Mackintosh, professor and head of the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University. 

It's funny to think about it, but the idea of ​​cultivating protein in a laboratory is a serious matter. According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Food, meat production accounts for 57% of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

Among the many initiatives that have emerged to address alternatives to the production and consumption of animals, one is the farming or farmed meat industry, which uses cell cultures derived from animals to produce protein. (Just like in the real thing, not Beyond- or Impossible-adjacent.)

Kelly Schultz, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, said: "The problem with cultivating meat now is that they can't produce'whole pieces' with the right texture and low price." ChBE).

Schultz and McIntosh are part of Lehigh’s PC Rossin School of Engineering and Applied Sciences team, which recently received a $250,000 grant from the Good Food Institute, an international non-profit organization dedicated to reimagining the way meat is produced To solve this problem. The group also includes ChBE associate professors Angela Brown and Mark Snyder.

"The four of us have all been trained as chemical engineers, but our research fields are so different," Brown said. "So even though it may not look very interdisciplinary on paper, it really is."

It may take such a diverse skill set—plus an outsider's perspective—to solve the inherently complex dual problem. 

On the one hand, the larger the growing piece of meat, the harder it is for the cells in the middle to get enough oxygen and nutrients. If they starve to death any of them, they will die. ("I guess you might really get sick if you eat that," Schultz said.) Second, muscle cells must be stimulated to grow in the correct tissue pattern. It is this pattern that provides the texture, the satisfying taste tells us that we are eating steak, hamburger or chicken nuggets.

Schultz is the lead researcher of the project. Among these four people, her work may be the most in line with the project's intent. Her laboratory research can be used for the characterization of colloidal and polymer gel scaffolds for human tissue engineering. 

Schultz will work with Synder to develop a scaffold for the growth of meat cells, and they will use the same structure that she uses for human wound healing. However, it is not hard enough now.  

"When you integrate cells into the scaffold, you have to provide them with a suitable physical environment," she said. "You have to make the environment feel like muscles so that the cells can maintain muscle cells and make more."

In order to obtain the right stiffness, Snyder's work focuses on designing nanomaterials for applications ranging from energy to imaging. He will synthesize and functionalize nanoparticles to fundamentally adjust the characteristics of the gel structure.

"The idea is to control the properties of these stem cells to differentiate into meat cells through mechanical or chemical cues," Snyder said. "But we must also consider how the gel structure is reconstructed and adapted to growing cells. So the adaptability of the gel is another matter. We have already considered how to use this nanocomposite gel to obtain a more fibrotic way The cell structure formed." 

McIntosh will use his expertise in electrochemistry to further promote the growth of this fiber.

"My other joke is that I am here to exercise chicken nuggets," he said. "We will create an exercise regime for this by figuring out what the bioelectrochemistry is needed to guide the formation of this muscle tissue."

That's because muscles grow through constant bending and recovery. This is a function of the body's nervous system. It is an electronic system. The research cited by McIntosh shows the effect of electric fields on muscle cells.

"It creates a chemical gradient in the cell and drives the cell to form fibers," he said.

However, without a stable supply of nutrients and oxygen, nothing can be formed. This is where Brown comes in. 

Brown's research involves lipoprotein interactions in bacterial diseases. For this project, she will create a liposome delivery tool. 

"Lipids are made from cell membranes," she said. "They are good because you can wrap things in them."

She will develop two such molecules: one will transport glucose; the other, oxygen. 

"We will tether these liposomes to the scaffold that Kelly and Mark are working on," she said. "When cells grow on the scaffold, [molecules] should release these nutrients into the cells so that they can continue to grow instead of dying."

The ultimate goal of the team is to build a scalable platform for the production of "full cut" meat, which can be applied to a series of protein products that will one day be sold in supermarkets. They know that there is still a long way to go. But at the same time, it is possible to answer many basic questions in areas beyond their personal research pursuits.

"When you put such cooperative projects together, you end up doing things that we can't do ourselves," McIntosh said. "Working with people with very different thinking and very different research methods is intellectually exciting. We will all push our knowledge in completely different directions. There is nothing more dynamic than this."

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Katie Kackenmeister Lehigh University kbk318@lehigh.edu Office: 610-758-3632

Copyright © 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Copyright © 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)