Cattle, swine, poultry, and fish cells for meat production: addressing challenges of co-culture and the innovative approaches for muscle and fat integration

This review describes the main challenges currently faced during co-culture for meat production, focusing on cell interactions during the differentiation stage and the innovative approaches for muscle and fat integration using cattle, swine, poultry, and fish cells. The simultaneous differentiation of muscle and fat cells promotes inhibitory interactions and does not seem to be efficient, although specific supplementation in the culture medium (with arginine or conjugated linoleic acids) demonstrated great potential to circumvent this behavior. Based on recent evidence, sequential differentiation using the same cell population (i.e. fibroblasts) in scaffolds seemed to be the most promising strategy for producing muscle and fat cells in a single system. Recommendations for future studies involve applying cell transformation techniques that do not involve genetic modification and developing edible scaffolds using this innovative approach. Furthermore, scaling up co-culture systems remains a technological challenge. While perfusion reactors offer a promising method for creating structured cultivated meat products, optimizing the co-culture approach and bioreactor designs will be crucial for commercial production.