Cell Lines for Cultivated Meat Production

Cellular agriculture is an emerging field that aims to provide a more sustainable alternative for the production of animal-derived products, without the need to sacrifice animals. Cultivated meat is one of the main products of cell agriculture and consists in the production of meat from animal cell cultures in a growth medium. A cell line with reproducible and consistent properties is essential for any bioprocess and is crucial for the production of cultivated meat. Developing cell lines from farm animal sources with the necessary proliferative capacity and differentiation potential is a critical technical component that must be optimized to enable scale-up and commercialization of cultivated meat. There are two major strategies to establish these cell lines: (1) using a sample of the tissue of interest (primary cell sources), with further isolation of the muscle-resident progenitor cells; and (2) by the use of pluripotent cell sources, like embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which have the capability to differentiate toward muscle-resident progenitor cells. As muscle is composed of different tissue types (nerves, blood vessels, adipose and connective tissue), the production of cultured meat requires the use of progenitor cells with the capability to differentiate into myocytes, adipocytes, fibroblasts, chondrocytes, and hematopoietic cells. This chapter will cover potential strategies for cell line development and their advantages and disadvantages, regarding the isolation protocol of cultivated fish, chicken and mammalian cells. In addition, sampling techniques, cell line characterization, conservation and quality control, as well as challenges and future prospects in the field will be addressed.