Magdeburg Biotechnologists Cooperate with Innocent Meat GmbH for Sustainable Food Production
More efficient processes with higher product yield of cultured meat
In a research project between the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg with the Rostock-based start-up company Innocent Meat GmbH, experts in cell culture technology contributed their expertise to process development.
The goal is to offer a sustainable and affordable alternative to conventional meat – cultivated meat. To achieve this, existing processes from the pharmaceutical and food industries must be restructured. The optimization of cells, media, and cultivation methods should go hand in hand. The start-up aims to develop an automated end-to-end production system and corresponding procedures. This is intended to ensure intensified sustainable production on-site within the meat-processing industry and pave the way for food manufacturers toward cell-based meat production.
The development of specific biotechnological building blocks is the foundation for scaling up cultured meat production to industrial levels. To achieve this, CDS-Member and team leader Prof. Yvonne Genzel and Jan Küchler, M.Sc., have initiated research in the collaborative project "Cellular Agriculture and Process Intensification." The Magdeburg research team's extensive experience in process intensification using various continuous cells and cell retention systems will be incorporated into the project.
The expertise in cell cultivation comes from Innocent Meat, as does the establishment of the initial process developments and media. These processes, cells, and media will initially be adopted by the Magdeburg team and then used in the reactors and cell retention systems at the Max Planck Institute. The goal is to develop comparative analyses and optimizations for the process, thereby producing as many cells as possible in high concentrations.
In this field, specifically high-cell-density cultivation using perfusion for yield optimization, the scientists from the Bioprocess Engineering research group (headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Udo Reichl) have already accumulated many years of experience and continuously developed this expertise. They have achieved particularly noteworthy success in scaling up virus yield for vaccine production, especially for viral vaccines.
The group aims to transfer the process knowledge gained from the new project to other applications and gather experience with different cells, products, and other areas of biotechnology. This experience can be used to address future challenges and contribute to more sustainable processes.
The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) through the special funding program "Industrial Bioeconomy," component A for cooperation between industrial partners and research institutions. The Max Planck Institute Magdeburg will receive project funding of approximately €285,000 over two years.
To the official Article of the Max-Planck-Institute Magdeburg