Modern Meadow aims to print raw meat using bioprinter

When you buy some beef at the butcher's, you know it comes from cattle that once mooed and chewed.

But imagine if this cut of meat, just perfect for your Sunday dinner, had been made from scratch - without slaughtering any animal.

US start-up Modern Meadow believes it can do just that - by making artificial raw meat using a 3D bioprinter.

Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capitalists, Paypal co-founder and early Facebook investor, has just backed the company with $350,000 (£218,000).

Set up by father-son team Gabor and Andras Forgacs, the start-up wants to take 3D printing to a whole new level.

For three-dimensional printing, solid objects are made from a digital model. It's also known as additive manufacturing: to make the structure tiny droplets are "printed" - layer by layer - via a carefully controlled inkjet nozzle.

The principle has been around for more than a decade, and is already used successfully to create jewellery, toys, furniture, cars, and even - most recently - parts of a gun.

Some researchers have also managed to print food like chocolate.

But Prof Gabor Forgacs, of the University of Missouri, says bioprinting something that is part of a living creature is much more challenging than making an earring or a chocolate bar.

"We are printing live material - [the] cells are alive when we are printing them," he says.

Gabor Forgacs Modern Meadow

"Three-dimensional printing has taken off big time, and printing things such as whipped cream is just another application of it - but it's no big deal.

"Printing biomaterial is an entirely different ball game."

Prof Forgacs says that he and his team have already managed to produce a prototype, but it is not yet suitable for consumption.
Regenerative medicine

To bioengineer meat, the scientists first get stem cells or other specialised cells from an animal via a common procedure known as biopsy.

Stem cells are cells able to replicate themselves many times, and also can turn into other specialised cells. Once the cells multiplied to sufficient numbers, they are put into a bio-cartridge.

So instead of traditional ink or a material like plastic, the 3D printer cartridge contains something called bioink made of hundreds of thousands of live cells.

Once printed in the desired shape, the bioink particles naturally fuse to form living tissue.

Hod Lipson, director of the Computational Synthesis Laboratory at Cornell University, demonstrates how to bioprint an ear using silicone gel

This process of bioprinting biomaterials is similar to attempts to print artificial organs for transplants - but the result could well end up in your frying pan.

So far there have been trials using bioprinted tissue and body parts have only been done on animals.

"In some sense, Modern Meadow is taking the technology beyond regenerative medicine," says Prof Forgacs.
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It eventually will be killed - not killed in the sense of killing an animal but killing cellular construct”

Gabor Forgacs Modern Meadow

Before Modern Meadow, he co-founded Organovo - one of the firms pioneering the use of printed live structures for medical purposes.

In 2010, Organovo successfully bioprinted functional blood vessels made from the cells of an individual person.

Another team of researchers, led by Jeremy Mao at Columbia University, implanted a 3D-printed tooth-shaped scaffold into the jawbone of a rat, and showed that the animal started naturally growing a tooth using stem cells from the body within weeks.

Researchers at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, working with the US Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine, have bioprinted cells directly onto skin wounds of mice, to accelerate the healing process.
Post-mortem tissue

But many aspects of regenerative medicine are still to be perfected before any human trials start.

"When you want to engineer an organ you have a zillion conditions and requirements to fulfil," says Prof Forgacs.
Lab grown meat Scientists in the Netherlands have grown strips of muscle in their lab

"You have to be extremely careful as a tissue or an organ are very complex structures.

"In the case of meat, if you think about a hamburger, its lateral dimensions are much bigger than its thickness so that makes the printing considerably simpler.

"So we're not dealing with incredibly complex 3D shapes, intertwined channels, and so on - we want to build something that has this quasi-2D shape."

The main similarity between engineering organs and meat is that in both cases, the result is made of biological material - except that the latter is post-mortem tissue.

"It eventually will be killed - not killed in the sense of killing an animal but killing the tissue construct," says Prof Forgacs.

Although the actual process of making meat may be simpler, it will be challenging to produce such meat on an industrial scale, and persuade consumers to accept it, he adds.

"We're still struggling with coming out with the right term for our meat.

"You say 'engineered' or 'lab-made' meat, and the folks on the street probably are not going to be very happy to hear that."
Pricy burger

It is not the only attempt under way to create a piece of synthetic meat.

Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands are growing animal cells to produce strips of muscle tissue.

Project leader Mark Post says that the team is creating what could become world's first artificial hamburger, aiming to demonstrate it to the public later this year.

His team does not use bioprinting, but a form of biofabrication where the stem cells multiply in a specially prepared scaffold, effectively engineering live tissue.

The Dutch team has already showcased small pieces of artificially grown muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about 1mm thick.

Producing a whole hamburger using his method would currently cost about £200,000, he says, but the price will plummet as the technology advances.

So in the future, more cows may be able to roam the fields without having to fear the slaughterhouse.

 Grey Templar wrote:
My question is, if the cells being used to make the "meat" are living, and someone would have trouble killing a living thing for food, how is this any different from killing a cow?

I think its cool, food grown in a very efficient way, but I would still prefer a real steak. I mean, how does taste compare?

 Grey Templar wrote:
My question is, if the cells being used to make the "meat" are living, and someone would have trouble killing a living thing for food, how is this any different from killing a cow?

 whembly wrote:
What I really want to know and I'm sure it's being thought of somehere... can this thing print human skin? Or... dare we hope... print human organs?

 Mannahnin wrote:
If you read the article, they specifically talk about how this technology is also being researched for organ replacement. But that's a lot more complicated, because you have to have more complex structures assembled in the correct order and working form.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
This is genius. Finally we can accept there is no God, only Science, and we can stop pretending animals were put on this Earth simply for us to torture and eat. One artificial beef cube please.

 DarkCorsair wrote:

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
This is genius. Finally we can accept there is no God, only Science, and we can stop pretending animals were put on this Earth simply for us to torture and eat. One artificial beef cube please.

Seriously? Do you realize the immense flame war you've just started? People like you are the reason we can't have nice threads... *shakes head and walks out*

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Soylent green is people!

Dr. What wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Soylent green is people!

You just made my day!

However, I fear what impact this could have in the future. (Cancer?)

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
This is genius. Finally we can accept there is no God, only Science, and we can stop pretending animals were put on this Earth simply for us to torture and eat. One artificial beef cube please.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:

Dr. What wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Soylent green is people!

You just made my day!

However, I fear what impact this could have in the future. (Cancer?)

Replace the cancerous cells with bio printing.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:

 DarkCorsair wrote:

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
This is genius. Finally we can accept there is no God, only Science, and we can stop pretending animals were put on this Earth simply for us to torture and eat. One artificial beef cube please.

Seriously? Do you realize the immense flame war you've just started? People like you are the reason we can't have nice threads... *shakes head and walks out*

All Ive "started" is your single post complaining about mine. My post is simply a statement of my own thoughts, opinions, and feelings on the subject. I think it is genius and definitely a step in a positive direction. If you dont like the opinions stated on a public forum you should have skipped right over posting and gone straight to head shaking and walking out.



Anyways......



Quite a debate on it in the office after I read it. Most people are skeptical to try something like that. Yet the medical possibilities are endless and undeniable.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
Im sure a filet mignon is going to look and taste like Spam unfortunately.

Grey Templar wrote:My question is, if the cells being used to make the "meat" are living, and someone would have trouble killing a living thing for food, how is this any different from killing a cow?

 Grey Templar wrote:
My question is, if the cells being used to make the "meat" are living, and someone would have trouble killing a living thing for food, how is this any different from killing a cow?

I think its cool, food grown in a very efficient way, but I would still prefer a real steak. I mean, how does taste compare?

 Mannahnin wrote:
If you read the article, they specifically talk about how this technology is also being researched for organ replacement. But that's a lot more complicated, because you have to have more complex structures assembled in the correct order and working form.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Well, those someones should also take note of how many bacterial cells they kill every day just by breathing, and promptly stop.

 sebster wrote:

And even among wealthier consumers... well we've all had McDonalds. The beef like patty that's in a Macca's burger could probably be spat out of a 3D printer and no-one would notice. Hell, it could be spat out of a regular printer, just ink and soggy paper mashed together and I don't think anyone would notice.

Steve steveson wrote:
Actualy, I could see a future where McD's et al no longer have diliverys of frozen burgers but have there own onsite beef growing "vat", all automated, linked to a printer that prints out burgers strait on to a grill, all the "reastaurant" (It pains me to call McD's that) has to do is flip them and keep a hopper filld with bags of groth medium. It will reduce transport costs, electricity costs (Industrial freezers are expensive) and would mean every restaurant would be able to say "we only use fresh, local meat". They could also start printing novelty burgers. Christmas time? Pine tree shape! Haloween? Pumpkin shape burgers!

The only question will be, how long before someone works out how to hack the "printer" and start churning out cock shaped burgers...