Growth factors-infused cellulose scaffolds support cost-efficient proliferation and differentiation of bovine stem cells for cultivated meat

Cultivated meat, which aims to replicate traditional meat using tissue engineering and stem cell biology, is a promising approach to sustainably supplementing traditional meat production to meet increasing global demand. The production of structured cultivated whole-cut-like meat constructs is not trivial; it requires a complex structure that supports cell growth, enables nutrient and waste exchange, and mimics natural texture. Here, we develop a biocompatible, porous, and anisotropic scaffold, based on directional freezing of nano and microcrystalline cellulose, which supports the growth and differentiation of bovine mesenchymal stem cells toward fat and muscle lineages. Furthermore, we show that preloading the scaffolds with growth factors directing the cells for proliferation or differentiation is a promising alternative to conventional media delivery since these pretreated scaffolds yield similar proliferation and differentiation efficiencies using at least 10 times lower masses of prohibitively expensive factors, and thus may significantly lower one of the primary boundaries to price parity with traditional meat. Together, these findings propose a strategy that supports the development of structured, muscle-like cultivated constructs and represents a step toward whole-cut meat as a sustainable and ethically preferable alternative to meet the growing demand for a widely studied target product.