I was a bit surprised to read what you wrote about Cultivated Meat. I am not an expert, but I’ve looked into this topic and my understanding is that there are fundamental technical challenges to be solved at least in cell expansion, the rate and specificity of cell growth, and the creation of thick cuts of any tissue. I’m sure that these can be solved in the end, but they seem very difficult (considering that cell expansion is needed for making blood cells and other non-tissue type of cells in the much more heavily funded biomedical field which is also less bottlenecked by medium cost).
I understand that today we may be possible to make some hybrid products, but that these won’t really be similar to the real thing. Is this similar to your view?
I think this is what Blake is talking about when he writes ‘a lot of the true technical challenges are on the bioprocess design side’. These are exactly as you say—the ‘creation of thick cuts of any tissue’ includes getting the right cell lines and having them differentiate into the right things at the right time, having the right scaffolds, and putting things into the right bioreactors.
I was a bit surprised to read what you wrote about Cultivated Meat. I am not an expert, but I’ve looked into this topic and my understanding is that there are fundamental technical challenges to be solved at least in cell expansion, the rate and specificity of cell growth, and the creation of thick cuts of any tissue. I’m sure that these can be solved in the end, but they seem very difficult (considering that cell expansion is needed for making blood cells and other non-tissue type of cells in the much more heavily funded biomedical field which is also less bottlenecked by medium cost).
I understand that today we may be possible to make some hybrid products, but that these won’t really be similar to the real thing. Is this similar to your view?
I think this is what Blake is talking about when he writes ‘a lot of the true technical challenges are on the bioprocess design side’. These are exactly as you say—the ‘creation of thick cuts of any tissue’ includes getting the right cell lines and having them differentiate into the right things at the right time, having the right scaffolds, and putting things into the right bioreactors.
Yea, thanks. But is this true that these technical challenges really are more straightforward and only a matter of money poured in?