Chemically defined media for porcine muscle progenitor expansion – towards their application in cellular agriculture

Agriculture is on the brink of a paradigm shift due to sustainability challenges and the demands of a growing population. This transformation is being led by cellular agriculture, an emerging industry that encompasses lab-grown products ranging from sugar substitutes to meat-in-a-dish. Canada’s pork industry, one of the world’s largest, stands to benefit from this innovation given recent environmental and geopolitical challenges, by offering an ethical and sustainable alternative to traditional farming.
However, current production methods are hindering the commercial viability of cellular agriculture due to inefficiencies and high cost. Cell culture media, the nutrient-rich solution required for cell growth, has been designated the culprit. Largely, this is because media was originally designed for the biomedical industry, not for the large-scale cultivation of pig muscle cells, where cell requirements and economic expectations are vastly different.
Our collaborative team has partnered with Myo Palate to directly tackle challenges in culture media formulation development by leveraging our custom predictive algorithm. Unlike more dated approaches, this allows us to simultaneously evaluate multiple ingredients, assessing their impacts on cell growth and cost-effectiveness. This approach will drastically improve the efficiency of media formulation and quality of the cultured cells.

Faculty Supervisor:

Craig Simmons;Julie Audet

Student:

Partner:

Myo Palate

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Toronto

Program: