Investigating the influence of 3D mechanotransduction on porcine adipose-derived stem cells in a hydrogel system for cultivated meat

Abstract

For millenniums, livestock farming has been the sole source of meat production and with increasing awareness global warming, sustainability and food shortage, alternative protein production has garnered a lot of interest in recent years, one of which being the production of cultivated meat. The main challenges of cultivated meat is its ability to replicate meat texture, and the scalability and cost-effectiveness of its production process. To mitigate these challenges, the principles of 3D mechanotransduction are borrowed to direct pADSCs toward myogenesis. This approach reduces the reliance, cost and issues associated to biological soluble factors. This thesis, investigates the influence of 3D fibrous scaffold architecture on the myogenesis of pADSCs and seeks to elucidate the mechanisms of 3D mechanotransduction and examines the feasibility the proposed production method as an approach to produce cultivated meat. The use of an alginate-gelatin 3D composite hydrogel platform, with appropriate mechanical cues and stimulations, pADSCs can undergo myogenesis without the use of specific myogenic inducing biological factors. It was also discovered that the application of static longitudinal tension throughout the culture duration plays a significant role in promoting and accelerating the myogenic process as it facilitates cell elongation and alignment within the alginate-gelatin composite hydrogel. The cultivated meat prototypes produced with this process are not only visually similar to its traditional meat counterpart but has comparable soluble protein content as well. However, its mechanical and textural properties pale in comparison due to the significantly high water content. While there is room for improvement, this method is scalable, versatile, and is able to facilitate proliferation, differentiation and maturation of pADSCs toward skeletal muscle cells, demonstrating its potential for cultivated meat production.