Engineered bionanoparticles as carriers for growth factors and peptides that promote cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation to improve the production of low-cost cultured meat (NanoMeat)

• Applicants: Che Julius Ngwa, Ph.D.; Dr. Juliane Schuphan
• Subject Area: Biomaterials
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565625683

Cultured or artificial meat is a form of cellular agriculture involving the production of meat from animal cells cultivated in vitro. This rapidly developing technology could provide meat to the world’s growing population while also addressing the drawbacks of traditional livestock agriculture, such as infectious diseases, antibiotic misuse, poor animal welfare, and greenhouse gas emissions. To become competitive, cultured meat must be economically comparable and ethically superior to natural meat, but this is challenging because fetal bovine serum (FBS) is needed in the culture medium to provide growth factors for cell proliferation and differentiation. FBS is expensive and can only be sourced by killing calves. A more cost-effective and ethical solution is the use of scaffolds for recombinant growth factors, offering the advantages of controlled release, greater efficacy and lower costs. Growth factors can be immobilized on plant virus-like nanoparticles (VNPs/VLPs), which are versatile and biocompatible scaffolds that act as protein-based carriers. VNPs/VLPs can be incorporated as hydrogel composites to enhance stem cell adhesion and promote cell differentiation in a 3D environment. Plant VNPs/VLPs are well tolerated by mammals and are neither toxic nor infectious to mammalian cells in vitro, making them ideal for the production of cultured meat. The proposed project will address the following research questions: (1) Can stem cells be cultivated with engineered VNPs/VLPs displaying cell adhesion peptides and growth factors in a hydrogel matrix? (2) Do these scaffolds promote stem cell attachment, proliferation, differentiation and maturation? (3) Can these scaffolds replace FBS, thus providing a safe, inexpensive and ethical alternative for cultured meat production?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants