Date of Completion
2023
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering
Thesis Type
Honors College
First Advisor
Dr. Rachael Floreani
Second Advisor
Dr. Amber Doiron
Third Advisor
N/A
Keywords
tissue engineering, cultivated meat, cellular agriculture, food systems, FBS-free, sustainability
Abstract
Within the world of biomedical engineering, tissue engineering is a continually developing discipline overflowing with possibilities for not only furthering scientific progress but repairing humanity’s parasitic relationship to the natural world. Cultivated meat is a promising new field of study with the potential to overhaul traditional agricultural practices to establish more sustainable food systems all across the globe. An exploration of the optimal tissue culture conditions for cultivating lab-grown meat was conducted by testing serum-free alternatives to fetal bovine serum-supplemented cell culture media in addition to a novel scaffolding material for growing muscle tissue in vitro. Several FBS alternatives showed promising cell viability results for eventual adoption into common cell culture protocols. In addition, new cell scaffolding material demonstrated favorable mechanical and physiological properties for use in muscle tissue culture for human consumption. Future work is discussed to further explore fine-tuning of meat-growing conditions on a large scale, with the hopes of one day integrating the practices into modern day food production.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
White, Gabriella Alfaro, "The Optimization of Tissue Culture Conditions for the Production of Cultivated Meat" (2023). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 600.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/600
Comments
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