细胞培养肉（Cell-based meat，CBM）生产是一种很有前途的技术，可以在不需要动物农业的情况下生产肉。组织的生成需要一个三维（three-dimensional，3D）支架来为细胞提供支持和模拟细胞外基质（extracellular matrix，ECM）。
对于CBM来说，支架是可食的，并且具有适宜的营养价值和质地。以色列海法理工学院生物医学工程系的Tom Ben-Arye、Yulia Shandalov、Shahar Ben-Shaul等人展示了一种组织化大豆蛋白（一种可食用的多孔蛋白质基生物材料），作为一种新型的CBM支架，它可以支持细胞附着和增殖，从而构建一种3D工程化的牛肌肉组织。通过添加与成肌相关的生长因子，培养基成分针对3D牛卫星细胞（bovine satellite cell，BSC）的增殖和分化进行了优化。该研究比较了几种细胞组合的肌生成，发现BSCs与牛平滑肌细胞共培养及BSCs、牛平滑肌细胞和牛内皮细胞三种共培养均能促进肌生成和ECM沉积。与BSC单培养相比，共培养中与ECM基因集相关的蛋白表达增加。
志愿者们在烹饪后品尝了该产品，并留意到它的肉味和感官特性，达到了食用肉食的感觉和质地。这一方法是将CBM作为食品应用生产的一个进步。
Textured soy protein scaffolds enable the generation of three-dimensional bovine skeletal muscle tissue for cell-based meat
Tom Ben-Arye, Yulia Shandalov, Shahar Ben-Shaul, Shira Landau, Yedidya Zagury, Iris Ianovici, Neta Lavon & Shulamit Levenberg
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
Aleph Farms Ltd, Ashdod, Israel
Cell-based meat (CBM) production is a promising technology that could generate meat without the need of animal agriculture. The generation of tissue requires a three-dimensional (3D) scaffold to provide support to the cells and mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM). For CBM, the scaffold needs to be edible and have suitable nutritional value and texture. Here, we demonstrate the use of textured soy protein—an edible porous protein-based biomaterial—as a novel CBM scaffold that can support cell attachment and proliferation to create a 3D engineered bovine muscle tissue. The media composition was optimized for 3D bovine satellite cell (BSC) proliferation and differentiation by adding myogenic-related growth factors. Myogenesis of several cell combinations was compared, and elevated myogenesis and ECM deposition were shown in co-culture of BSCs with bovine smooth muscle cells and tri-cultures of BSCs, bovine smooth muscle cells and bovine endothelial cells. The expression of proteins associated with ECM gene sets was increased in the co-culture compared with BSC monoculture. Volunteers tasted the product after cooking and noted its meaty flavour and sensorial attributes, achieving the goal of replicating the sensation and texture of a meat bite. This approach represents a step forward for the applied production of CBM as a food product.
该文章《Textured soy protein scaffolds enable the generation of three-dimensional bovine skeletal muscle tissue for cell-based meat》于《Nature Food 》2020年出版。