In addition to what avacyn said about hydrolysates (very important! Amino acids are really expensive!), off the top of my head:
Figuring out ways to do extreme sanitation/fully aseptic operations cheaply at scale
mammal stem cells double every 21-48 hours, E.coli doubles every 25 minutes, if you have a giant bioreactor full of yummy meat cells + growth media at ph~=7.0 and temp~=37C, one stray bacterium or virus can ruin your day.
maybe more of an engineering problem than a foundational science problem, but solving this would also be fairly helpful for a number of medical and other bioengineering scaleup questions
novel(?) materials science that lets you build high-quality reusable bioreactors without being as expensive as stainless steel or “use and discard” as has become common(?) in biologics
genetic engineering to create cells that have much longer lifespans (or are immortal), breaking the Hayflick limit.
Other cell line genetic engineering, including but not limited to:
faster growth rates
higher metabolic efficiency
countering catabolite and CO2 inhibition
I’m not sure what catabolite inhibitionactually does, biologically, but it sure seems important.
Tissue engineering/scaffolding, useful both for adding structure to clean meat (eg in steaks) and (in the limit) for creating replacement body parts in surgery for humans
though I’ve been advised that scaffolding is unlikely to be the most significant bottleneck for cultured meat.
In addition to what avacyn said about hydrolysates (very important! Amino acids are really expensive!), off the top of my head:
Figuring out ways to do extreme sanitation/fully aseptic operations cheaply at scale
mammal stem cells double every 21-48 hours, E.coli doubles every 25 minutes, if you have a giant bioreactor full of yummy meat cells + growth media at ph~=7.0 and temp~=37C, one stray bacterium or virus can ruin your day.
maybe more of an engineering problem than a foundational science problem, but solving this would also be fairly helpful for a number of medical and other bioengineering scaleup questions
novel(?) materials science that lets you build high-quality reusable bioreactors without being as expensive as stainless steel or “use and discard” as has become common(?) in biologics
genetic engineering to create cells that have much longer lifespans (or are immortal), breaking the Hayflick limit.
Other cell line genetic engineering, including but not limited to:
faster growth rates
higher metabolic efficiency
countering catabolite and CO2 inhibition
I’m not sure what catabolite inhibition actually does, biologically, but it sure seems important.
Tissue engineering/scaffolding, useful both for adding structure to clean meat (eg in steaks) and (in the limit) for creating replacement body parts in surgery for humans
though I’ve been advised that scaffolding is unlikely to be the most significant bottleneck for cultured meat.