Acetate cellulose fibrous scaffold is suitable for cultivated fat production

Curr Res Food Sci. 2024 Oct 28:9:100903. doi: 10.1016/j.crfs.2024.100903. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Fat is an essential component of meat which contributes to its sensory characteristics. Therefore, producing cultivated fat is essential to replicate the texture, flavor, and juiciness of conventional meat. One of the challenges in obtaining cultivated fat is that once adipocytes reach differentiation in culture, they tend to float. In this study, we tested whether immortalized pre-adipocytes could be viable, grow, and differentiate when cultivated onto a fibrous scaffold produced by the electrospun of cellulose acetate. Our results demonstrated that the cells attach, proliferate, colonize, and differentiate into mature adipocytes in the three-dimensional fibrous structure during the culture period. Moreover, when layers of the scaffold containing differentiated cells were stacked, it acquired a characteristic similar to conventional animal fat. Therefore, this research suggests that fibrous scaffolds produced using cellulose acetate are a promising substrate for producing cultivated fat.

Keywords: Adipocytes; Adipogenic differentiation; Cellulose acetate; Cultivated fat; Electrospinning; Scaffold.