Hi guys, thanks for coming out.
My name's Marie.
I'm gonna be talking to you guys a little
bit about the technical challenges that are
associated with scale-up of clean meat.
Some of the bottlenecks that we're facing
right now are picking the right type of cells,
the media, and the scale-up in the form of
bioreactors.
I'm gonna touch on each of these individually.
I'll start off with the cells.
Some of the traits that we are looking for
within the cells: We want them to be fast
and easy to grow.
We want them to be long lasting, and we want
them to be flexible.
I want to jump in on this a little bit.
These are four different types of cells that
we are able to currently grow in the lab and
use to make meat.
We have access to embryonic stem cells that
we can use to make several different meat
types.
We can also use mesenchymal stem cells.
Those are stem cells that are found naturally
within adult bodies.
So if you guys have an issue with taking embryonic
stem cells to create meat, it's actually something
that we can take biopsies, take cell types
from individual adults and make meat that
way.
Additionally, we can take cells from individual
cell types such as satellite cells, which
is kind of like a baby muscle cell, so it's
not as immature as a stem cell, but it's still
pretty young where we can kind of train it
to do something else if we want to.
And then additionally we can actually do something
called induced pluripotents where we can take
theoretically any type of cell.
We can take a feather, we can take a hair
follicle, we can take a skin scraping, we
can take a cheek swab, and theoretically we
can take those cells and turn those into stem
cells, and then in turn we can tell them to
turn into any cell type that we want.
I'm saying in theory a lot because we haven't
been able to take any cell out there and turn
it into any cell that we want to, but we have
been able to take a lot of different cell
types and turn them into specific cell types
of interest.
I think that's a really exciting area of research
that needs further exploration.
The next thing that I want to talk about is
the ability for us to take these cells and
rather than continuously harvest them from
animals, because obviously if we want to be
able to grow meat without animals we're going
to not use animals to grow the meat, right?
So if we want to be able to take these cells
and have them continuously grow without needing
to collect them over and over again, we need
to start thinking about how we can keep these
cells in a state where they are technically
immortal.
So with that I want to get into a little bit
of cellular anatomy, so bear with me, and
I'll walk you through this slide a little
bit.
Here we have our cells again.
This little green sphere here is what I like
to call the cell brain, also known as the
nucleus.
Within the nucleus is all of the genetic information
that is necessary to take an individual cell
and turn that into billions of cells that
make up something like a human being.
And that genetic information is also known
as DNA, and DNA is usually wrapped up in a
form of something called chromatin, which
is what we are seeing here in that little
X shape.
And what happens is over time this chromatin,
as cells divide and the chromatin is also
copied and passed on to future generations
of cells, over time about 60 cell divisions
in, we hit something called a Hayflick limit.
What happens is as our cells divide, the machinery
that's required for the DNA to be replicated
isn't 100% efficient.
So the ends of the chromosomes actually get
worn down a little bit with every cell division.
If you see on the chromatin structure, the
ends are lime green.
I don't think that chromatin is actually hot
pink and lime green.
I haven't personally seen real chromatin before,
it's very small, but I think that this is
just a visual.
But the lime green is something that's called
a telomere, and what those do is they serve
as a buffer during every cellular division.
But, again, over time this cellular division
will eventually wear down all of the telomeres,
and then important genes that are required
for things like metabolism or telling the
cell to not kill itself, because literally
if a cell doesn't know what to do it's going
to commit suicide, these poor things.
But anyway, luckily we have been able to discover
a protein called telomerase, and telomerase
acts by actually adding telomeres back onto
your chromosomes, so the more research that
we do into telomerase the more that we can
understand in terms of large scale meat production,
but we can also look into more things like
curing diseases, curing aging, understanding
how cancer works, so it's a lot of really
exciting research going on with telomerase.
The next thing I want to address in terms
of the types of cells that we want is the
flexibility.
So just off the top of my head I can think
of at least seven different cell types that
are needed in order to make up meat.
On the top we have our skin cells, we have
our bone cells, we have our blood cells, fat
cells, cells that are responsible for making
connective tissue.
We also have neurons, and then of course muscle.
So these are all seven very different types
of cells.
And it would be ideal if we would be able
to take a cell type, really understand how
to grow it in a controlled setting, and then
also be able to get these cells to differentiate
and change into all of these different cell
types.
And that's something that has already been
shown to be doable.
We can do it through media additives.
We can even do it through the architecture
of the scaffolding that we're putting the
cells on.
And additionally we can do that through genetic
editing.
With that I want to talk a little bit more
about the next bottleneck, which is the media,
or cell food, if you will.
The media, when you think about the role of
media, the first thing is that it needs to
provide an adequate environment for the cells
to live in, basically tricking the cells into
thinking that they're still in the animal.
We need the right pH, the right temperature,
the right osmotic pressure so the cells don't
explode.
They like to do that if they're not happy.
Next thing is they provide a lot of vitamins
and minerals.
There's also lipids in there.
A lot of cells are actually made up of lipid.
Cell skin is just a lipid membrane, so lots
of fats that are needed in order to keep cells
happy.
The other thing is protein.
Obviously in order for one cell to turn into
two cells they are going to need building
blocks to actually make another cell.
And, finally, growth factors.
The cool thing is that out of all of these
we've been able to use plants in order to
produce four of these requirements.
The one hiccup, though, is these growth factors.
That is the main issue in terms of the bottlenecks,
in terms of the cost of making meat right
now.
This is why a chicken nugget is gonna be $400
if we're growing it instead of harvesting
it from an animal.
I want to talk a little bit about where we
are currently getting our growth factors as
well as some of the options for where we can
get them later on.
Originally we were getting our growth factors
from baby cows.
Obviously we cannot do that, so now we've
started to get them through recombinant protein
production.
We're replacing cows with bioreactors.
You guys see the foreshadowing that I just
did.
With that, we are able to do something called
recombinant protein production where we actually
take the gene that's associated with this
protein or the growth factor, put it inside
of a bacterium, have these bacteria grow up
very fast and at very high yields, and then
harvest the proteins from the bacteria.
But there are other options as well.
We can explore plant based growth factors
or analogues.
We might even be able to use chemical synthesis
of the proteins that are found in plants in
order to replicate these growth factors.
And we can also isolate growth factors from
cells that naturally produce them in the body,
which is where we're actually getting them
from when we harvest blood from baby cows.
Rather than making a cow we can just grow
the cells that are responsible for growing
the growth factors to begin with.
There is one other option that I want to explore
with you, and in doing so first we need to
walk through the role of a growth factor.
The growth factor serves as a form of a signal,
so in this demonstration it's what the ligand
is representing, so it's produced and released
by another cell.
It then binds to the target cell's cell surface
receptor, and then when that happens it triggers
an intracellular pathway, which in response
to this pathway we get a genetic transcription
change.
And that in turn is what causes the growth.
What I'm exploring right now is this bit right
here, this genetic transcription, and trying
to really cut out all of the middle men.
Instead of relying on these growth factors
in order to get the cell to do what I want,
which is grow, I'm actually just designing
a gene sequence that allows the cell, assuming
that it has all the nutrients that it needs,
to just continuously grow until we take it
out of the environment that it's not happy
in anymore.
I'm currently working on that at Harvard Medical
School with Dr. Church, which, by the way,
I met him at EA Global last year.
He was giving a talk and said that he was
interested in exploring clean meat, so I made
a beeline to him right after the talk, and
now I'm in his lab, so thank you EA Global.
Yes, exactly.
So these are some of the tools that I'm working
on right now.
I don't have time to get into them, but if
anybody has any questions I have office hours
from 3:00 to 3:30, and I would love to jump
into that with you.
With that I would like to end with the bioreactors.
My money is on large scale suspension growth
because that's currently what pharmaceutical
companies are using right now.
What we're looking for is something that's
energy efficient, sterile, easy to use, and
obviously scalable.
So far we are able to get muscle cells to
grow in suspension, so all we're needing to
do now is just kind of tweak that.
So here are some of my little turkey micro
nuggets floating around in suspension, very
happy.
In terms of energy efficiency the first thing
that I saw when I Googled solar powered bioreactor
was this baby right here.
Obviously we need a little bit of work to
go before we have that happening.
But in terms of sterility, again this is something
that biopharmaceutical industries are using
constantly.
This is only a 2,000 liter reactor.
They've gotten up to 400,000 liters, so they're
already doing a lot of the work for us.
And in terms of easy to use I have personally
also already used one, so if I can do it you
guys can do it too.
If you know how to use a computer, and you
know how to work a hose, and you know not
to sneeze where you're not supposed to sneeze
you can grow meat in a bioreactor.
With that, I want to leave you with this image,
which is a current large scale cell production
facility used for biopharmaceuticals.
It might look a little complicated, might
look a little expensive, and I would agree
with you.
But I would say in comparison to what large
scale meat production facilities look like
right now, this is definitely a step up.
The point is that we are already here thanks
to the biopharmaceutical industry, thanks
to current research that's already happening
that doesn't even have any sort of relationship
to clean meat.
We are part of this biological revolution
that's happening right now where we can actually
harness the power within genetics, within
biological life to create not just meat and
not just food, but we can actually create
life that is more efficient, that's safer,
and more humane, and I believe more altruistic
than ever before.
Thank you very much. Natalie?
Thank you so much, Marie.
Is this on?
Yes.
I don't think many of us have had to so much
science so eloquently put in 15 minutes.
Thank you.
Okay, I will be shorter and far less technical,
I promise.
I just want to outline some of the recent
developments in consumer acceptance of clean
meat.
There are three things I'd like to say.
First of all, a lot of the polls by formal
and informal are methodologically lacking
and not particularly useful.
That said, the second thing is that even given
all of those limitations, it's clear that
the number of people who are interested in
consuming clean meat is very, very high so
there's a lot of potential there.
And thirdly there are ways in which we can
frame clean meat to make it even more attractive
to consumers and to institutions.
As the name of this talk suggests, we've already
made significant progress with "clean" meat
as one of those framing steps, and there are
others that we're thinking about and researching.
First, on to the existing informal polls.
These go back to 2012, which I believe is
the equivalent of millennia in clean meat
years, but even in those early days, in The
Guardian at least, around 70% of people said
they would eat lab-grown meat.
Clean meat, of course, ultimately will not
be lab-grown meat.
I think the 2014 poll shows something that
was lacking from earlier polls in The Guardian
in that it actually asked people about how
they felt about clean meat as an alternative
to conventional factory farmed meat, rather
than whether they would just eat it in a sort
of futuristic setting on a hypothetical setting,
without the context of conventional factory
farm meat.
The Mirror, hopefully not too reflective of
British society standards, also fairly optimistic
in the 2016 poll.
I think the Sam Harris Twitter poll, another
not completely formal methodology, was extremely
promising.
That should be 83%, yes, not 3%.
And the latest Memphis Meats Survey again
looks very promising.
Of course there are a huge number of problems
with these kinds of pollings.
The way in which you phrase the question has
a huge effect.
The different options available for answers
have a huge effect.
There's nothing to stop people answering the
poll several times.
And of course not all of these media outlets
will capture everything important about public
sentiment.
I'll just show you a few of my favorite Guardian
headlines to underline that point.
Perhaps our concerns aren't completely representative
of British society, but this is encouraging.
And just a quick note to say the way in which
formal polls are reported can be just as misleading
as the informal polls.
There was a paper from 2015, which was titled
something like Educated Consumers Don't Think
Clean Meat is an Ideal Solution.
That is a gross misrepresentation of what
the study was about.
It was widely reported as demonstrating clean
meat wasn't going to be particularly well
accepted, but actually the 2,000 people polled
in that survey were asked how can we solve
the problem of the meat industry.
There was a number of options such as eat
less meat, eat no meat, support plant-based
meat or clean meat, and participants could
only make one choice.
So this study really tells us nothing about
how we can expect consumers to adopt clean
meat.
Okay, the point that I think those earlier
formal and informal polls make is that even
if we take them at face value, and say okay,
even if less than 50%, even if only 10 or
20% of consumers are going to be interested
in adopting clean meat that is huge when we
compare that, for example, the current plant-based
meat market where less than half a percent
of the market is plant-based meat, and yet
companies in that space are doing fantastically
well.
So even on the most pessimistic view of these
surveys, which I think is incorrect, we have
reason to be hugely optimistic.
Okay, I'll turn now to some of the things
we can do to frame clean meat accurately,
and to maximize the chances of consumer adoption
going as well as possible.
The first hurdle was really the name, and
I think that's something that's now been well
established and for the right reasons.
Clean meat has been picked up by the vast
majority of media outlets and has really been
a very significant shift from lab based meat
and cultured meat, which were confusing and
misleading, towards clean meat, which is both
a nod to the clean energy sector, and emphasizes
that this meat is genuinely just less dirty
than the meat produced in the conditions on
factory farms.
Here we have a graph by GFI, which was published
I think a month or so ago showing sort of
the rise of clean meat usage.
And in terms of calling clean meat "meat",
which it unquestionably is at a cellular level.
Even the North American Meat Institute seems
to be supporting not restricting the use of
meat to conventional animal agriculture.
Moving beyond the name, in terms of how we
can optimally frame clean meat more broadly,
I've done what you're not supposed to do in
presentations and just dumped a load of text
in really small font, but to summarize that,
framing is really important.
Consumers seem to be more inclined to purchase
clean meat when they're made aware of the
environmental advantages, the human health
advantages, the advantages in terms of sustainability.
One particularly interesting challenge that
will be addressed soon is this feeling that
clean meat is somehow not natural.
There's been some interesting research on
this.
There are a number of approaches I think might
be viable going forward.
One of those could be to say actually no,
it's not natural, but the natural way in which
we're producing meat at the moment is fraught
with problems.
And things that aren't natural such as antibiotics
have been hugely beneficial.
Another way could be to stress the fact that
it is, to a large extent, natural in that
cells are growing as they naturally would.
Whether that's in an animal or in a bioreactor
is in some sense beside the point.
There are other framings that can challenge
how people perceive the natural to be good.
Faunalytics is in partnership with GFI and
funded by ACE, conducting an experiment that
is ongoing at the moment to address how we
should frame clean meat in a wider context.
With that, I conclude the very brief section
on consumer acceptance, and really hope that
you will come and speak to both Marie and
I at 3:30 this afternoon.
Thank you so much.
All right.
We've got a few questions, but only time for
probably just one right now.
So for those who have questions that we don't
get to, go see them at office hours.
An interesting question is just what is the
hardest part of this, and the questioner frames
it as saying, "If we're unable to get to a
clean meat future, if 100 years from now,
with all the work and energy that goes into
it, we still can't get there, what do you
think is the most likely reason that we won't
get there?"
And maybe this person should go work on that
problem.
I honestly think that the biology is there.
The only reason why we could have any sort
of hardship in terms of not getting there
physically would probably be due to social
issues, whether it be regulations put in place,
laws put in place to make sure that it doesn't
happen, considering who we have fighting against
us.
But the biology, in my opinion, is there and
ready, so it would be social issues, haters.
Alright, that was a short answer, so speaking of possible
haters I was surprised to see the acceptance,
seemingly acceptance of using the term meat
from the meat industry.
What do you think the role of the meat industry
is going to be?
Are they going to adopters, facilitators,
opponents, haters?
I think there's been some encouraging evidence
of late.
The context of that comment from the North
American Meat Institute was the US Cattleman's
Association, which they could probably also
do with a name change, had put forward a petition
saying we can't call clean meat "meat", and
this was opposed by the institution, which
contains Tyson and Cargill.
I think this is promising because it suggests
they see themselves as part of the protein
industry, the meat production industry, and
not the farming industry.
So I think that's encouraging.
They've both invested in Memphis Meats, so
the signs are looking good, I'd say, at present.
Cool.
Very interesting, very encouraging.
Find them at office hours for more.
Marie Gibbons and Natalie Cargill, thank you
very much.
