The headline “Say ‘no’ to scaffolding” by Alt Meat Editorial in reference to Jimi Biotech is damaging for the cultivated meat industry

On March 23, Alt-Meat sent out a bulletin with the title "Say 'no' to scaffolding" in reference to Jimi Biotech 's recent press release on their cultivated chicken.

The binary, unreasonably biased approach to promoting different methods of producing cultivated meat is sensationalistic, frustrating, misleading and is not science-based: it is a weak attempt to show some existence of process efficiency by using or not using scaffolds or microcarriers to produce cultivated meat products without showing scientific evidence to support the claims.?

In light of this recent article that disingenuously feature the so-called innovative and competitive advantages of cultivated meat companies that do not use scaffolds, our team of cell culture scientists, chemists, materials scientists and food scientists would like to clarify our position on the purpose of scaffolds and microcarriers and what these products mean for the cultivated meat industry.?

First and most importantly, producing cells alone to make cultivated meat without a scaffold or a microcarrier is possible.?

However, thinking that the cultivated meat industry will develop into a full fledged industry that is competitive in both scale, product quality and product diversity is not realistic without the use of extracellular matrices (microcarriers and scaffolds).?

At Matrix Food Technologies, we receive inbound requests on a daily basis from startups, corporates and distributors that are seeking to incorporate microcarriers and scaffolds into their products (or product catalogs in the case of distributors). Those customers are producing fish, beef, chicken, pork, food for people and animals; both whole muscle tissue and unstructured tissue. Our products contribute to cultivated meat product diversity in the industry.?

The idea that one production method (with or without) will be superior to the other; or, that it will mean that one product is superior to the other simply because they did or did not use microcarriers or scaffolds is an absurd way to define product or production quality, or even the economics of production - this is not a one-size-fits-all industry. We firmly believe that a “scaffold or not” approach to cultivated meat production is just too basic and elementary for an industry that has accomplished such incredible feats in such a small amount of time.

That being said, we feel that it is important to manage expectations on the function and purpose of microcarriers and scaffolds, and what suspension cells can achieve without them.?

Microcarriers have been studied for over 50 years. In every study, there is scientific evidence, concrete proof, that has been replicated time and time again, that microcarriers will always produce more cells/liter than suspension cells. This is an undisputed, evidence-based statement.?

When cultivated meat producers discuss their production with suspension cells and say things like they achieve improved cell "density" they are referring to the number of cells relative to whatever area they are working in - this might be a dish, a flask, or a bioreactor. Microcarriers will occupy some of that space that cells may fill - and they will produce more cells. Again, this is an undisputed, scientific fact.?

Because Matrix Food Technologies' microcarriers are edible and part of a final food product, they are also creating greater mass (cell mass+microcarrier) for the final food product, which may also provide an advantage in terms of efficiency or cost by reducing the amount of additional fillers into the final cultivated or hybrid product, among other benefits.

Scaffolds are for proliferating, maturing and differentiating a number of cell types. Suspension cells will not differentiate, cells must be attached to some kind of ECM or substrate. This means that without the use of scaffolds, we are going to be eating a lot of unstructured cultivated products like chicken nuggets, sausages and hotdogs. We have the science to do better than that, and it involves using edible scaffolds.?

Scaffolds and microcarriers may also be used at different steps of the production process, first for cell proliferation on microcarriers, then seeded onto scaffolds for differentiation or alternately, grown and differentiated on scaffolds and/or selected for suspension growth in a bioreactor.?

Now, what about if a company doesn’t use microcarriers or scaffolds? It is most likely using non-adherent, or suspension cells.?

Cell-based meat produced with suspension cells are simply unstructured cell mass, whether in an aggregate with a necrotic core, or individual cells with no muscle cell-like morphology. Suspension cells simply allow for production of the preliminary cell material that may become an ingredient in an unstructured or hybrid cell-based product. For example, GOOD Meat’s recent FDA approval was for a cell paste - which is an ingredient, not a final product, and it says so in their submission.?

Cells alone will most likely need to be supplemented with additional ingredients in unstructured products.

For example, in the recent article by Alt Meat Editorial,? Jimi Biotech, a China-based cultivated meat company, strangely pointed out the fact that they did not use “plant scaffolds” by saying: “cellular meat products containing plant scaffolds are not cellular meat in the true sense.”?

Our reply to that is - absolute nonsense.?

If cellular products containing scaffolds are not cellular meat in the “true sense,” then certainly neither is an undifferentiated blob of cells squeezed into a ball, as their images show in the article. Look closely at the images, and you will see that the product they show doesn't seem to have any differentiated tissue - this is not fibrous chicken meat, it is a ball of cells on which there is no data on nutritional content, cell type or process revealed. Cells cannot be grown in a 3d pellet. A bioreactor that can make a fully vascularized differentiated organ or muscle type would still be very small scale at best - maybe with a LOT of R&D and tech we will get there some day. Not today.?

Lastly, if you dive a little deeper into the poorly chosen “we don’t use scaffolds” headline, you just have to go to the company’s homepage to see they claim to make and use microcarriers in house. Odd. At best, it seems that the anti-scaffold approach was a poorly contemplated marketing and communications angle that did not contribute to the WOW factor of their product or company- it is just confusing, errant and bizarre.?

Most likely, there will always be products that are made exclusively with suspension cells and companies will have a way of turning those cells into a product. Similarly, other companies will use microcarriers and scaffolds, will design efficient processes around them and they will provide a large variety of hybrid, unstructured, structured or differentiated, complex cuts of meat to consumers. There is no scaling both volume and product diversity in the marketplace - which is ultimately what will allow for the cultivated meat industry to gain market share and have the intended impact of creating a more sustainable way to produce animal protein.?

Just listen to the experts:?

• Tufts, UCLA and other important academic institutions test microcarrier and scaffold development and promote their use.?
• Many companies have developed microcarriers or scaffolds in house and are using them for R&D, and may use their in house formulations for scale up production like Wildtype or Aleph Farms.?

To add to these examples, we repeat, on a daily basis, Matrix Food Technologies receives new requests for products from startups, multinationals and distributors, demonstrating that there is a need for these products in the cultivated meat space, as there is in the pharmaceutical industry - where there are no substitutes like “suspension cells” for cells that need a 3D environmental to function like they would in a host - or a body. Whether one product line of one company does need microcarriers or scaffolds or not does not indicate if the industry needs them - and the industry does need them for scale, product diversity, and to transform the future or protein production.?

Hopefully moving forward, Alt Meat and Jimi Biotech will find ways to communicate the value of their own R&D without making damaging statements that unnecessarily create confusion around enabling technologies or other methods that will, in scientifically proven ways, provide tools for this industry to scale.?

Questions or comments can be directed to Teryn Marie Wolfe , CEO of Matrix Food Technologies.