Meet the researcher: Using biomedical insights to advance cultivated meat with Petra Kluger

Name: Dr Petra Kluger

Job title: Professor of tissue engineering and biofabrication

Organisation: Reutlingen University

Sustainable protein specialism: Cultivated meat

A researcher who moved into cultivated meat after a career in tissue engineering says greater collaboration between scientists from different disciplines will be vital to advance the field.

Dr Petra Kluger leads a team at Reutlingen University in the German state of Baden-Württemberg where she applies principles from biomedicine to tackling the bottlenecks needed to bring cultivated meat closer to commercialisation.

The team has developed an approach in which ‘precursor’ muscle and fat cells are encouraged to bind together as they grow. This enables them to form aggregates – so-called ‘spheroids’ of tens of thousands of cells – which are then matured into fat and muscle cells identical to those found in conventional meat.

They are also applying insights from the emerging area of biofabrication – more commonly used in regenerative medicine – to increase the size of the animal cell mass, a process they believe could enable manufacturers to scale up production. The researchers published an overview of this technology’s potential in Advanced Healthcare Materials and Petra hopes to publish further work soon to demonstrate their findings.

Meanwhile, the team is working to develop serum-free, affordable, and sustainable cell culture media –the nutrient-rich liquid in which cells grow – using agricultural by-products and plans to begin incorporating components produced by algae.

In addition to working with the University of Hohenheim to examine the nutritional aspects of cultivated meat, they are involved in a German government-funded project with the cultivated seafood company Bluu and the University of Vechta focused on cultivating fish fat.

The team also works closely with industry partners, including analysing a new type of cultivator being developed to scale up production.

Networking to accelerate progress

But despite her team’s successes, Petra remains frustrated that much of the knowledge about cultivated meat is still owned by private companies and says more open-access research and collaboration is needed.

She believes the academic research network is particularly underdeveloped in Germany – something that could be addressed through the establishment of centres of excellence, in which scientists from a range of disciplines can exchange ideas. 

“Networking is what’s needed to improve the speed of progress,” she said. “Cultivated meat should also be on the agenda of the politicians here – we need them to talk about the importance of research.”

Quick to see the potential

Petra came to the field following years researching human and animal tissue as an alternative to animal testing and believes the field could advance more quickly if other scientists made similar transitions, but so far sees little sign of this happening.

After studying technical biology at the University of Stuttgart, she worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology, before moving to Reutlingen in 2013 – the year Dr Mark Post presented the world’s first cultivated burger. 

She was quick to see the potential, introducing a cultivated meat lesson for her students, and even applying for a grant to produce a steak using tissue engineering – rejected as funders said it had already been done.

Petra realised she could make a contribution to the field after being invited to speak at a cultivated meat conference in 2018, and began building the team shortly afterwards, with the first New Harvest-funded PhD placement the following year.

Fusing the biomedical and food worlds

“We need to merge both areas to optimally utilise the existing knowledge about biomedicine to solve problems in the production of cultivated meat,” she said. “When aiming to create a new liver in the field of organ printing, the required cell mass is a significant challenge, just as it is in the production of cultivated meat.

“We can learn a lot from each other, but without communication between both communities, we will only make slow progress.”

However, the growing number of students wanting to join her lab from across Europe gives her cause for optimism. 

“They are interested in the topic,” she said. “And being curious is always the most important thing. In our work, we need people who can think outside the box and work across all disciplines. 

“I hope to get the chance to start more collaborations and communication – this is something we need to improve.”

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