Israel and Russia printed artificial beef in space: plans for fish and rabbit

An Israeli and Russian company conducted a successful experiment and used a bioprinter to print a small piece of beef on the International Space Station. Future plans include printing fish and rabbit meat. Writes about this Meduza.

Фото: Depositphotos

The Israeli company Aleph Farms and the Russian private laboratory 3D Bioprinting Solutions conducted a successful experiment at the International Space Station: using Russian bioprinter, the muscle cells of the cow were collected in a small piece of meat (its size is not indicated). The Russian laboratory plans to continue the project - fish and rabbit tissue will be printed, cell material for which was provided by other companies. The experiment has a double goal: to make food production on Earth more environmentally friendly, as well as provide food for those who leave the planet.

The experiment was held on September 26 in the ISS Russian segment: under microgravity conditions, the 3D bioprinter successfully collected a piece of tissue.

The Israeli company announced its first successful experiment on Earth in December 2018 of the year: the cost of a small piece of artificial beef was 50 dollars. True, his taste "needs to be improved," the company acknowledged.

Aleph Farms isolates cells from live cows, grows them in an artificial nutrient medium in laboratory conditions, and then collects them in structures similar to ordinary meat. The company calls its product "meat without slaughter." However, the details of how it is possible to grow muscle cells in sufficient quantities are not disclosed. Typically, in biomedical research when growing cells on an artificial medium, the addition of calf blood serum is required, which is the source of the necessary growth factors. Without this additive, growing cells on an artificial medium is not possible. According to FoodNavigator, the company managed to find a whey substitute, but there are no details about this on the site of an Israeli startup.

On the subject: Israeli scientists printed a heart from a patient's cell on a 3D printer

The purpose of the space experiment is to show that food can be produced without access to the land and water resources of the planet, as well as to make its production more environmentally friendly and, at the same time, more accessible for those in need, said Aleph Farms spokesman Joab Reisler.

3D Bioprinting Solutions biotechnology research lab has become a Russian partner for Israelis. It was founded in 2013 by Invitro, the largest private medical company in Russia, which owns a well-known network of medical analysis laboratories.

The 3D Bioprinting Solutions report said that the basis of the space experiment was its “unique technology” of magnetic bioproduction, and the first experiments on its bioprinter on the ISS began back in the 2018 year. The laboratory trained Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Kononenko, members of the main and backup crew of the Soyuz spacecraft, to work with their printer. As a result, Kononenko was able to print pieces of tissue from the human cartilage and mouse thyroid gland.

The Russians noted that the current experiment on the ISS includes not only cow cells. “Three different types of meat will be tested: myoblastic / fibroblastic tissue of cattle provided by Aleph Farms, ordinary fundulus fibroblasts provided by Finless Foods, and myoblastic rabbit line developed by Meal Source Technologies,” it was reported.

On the subject: A patient in Israel was implanted with a part of the skull printed on a three-dimensional printer.

Russian and Israeli companies have said that producing cultured meat can be used to feed astronauts on long space missions to other planets. “Long-term manned space flights will inevitably face unprecedented challenges in the field of nutrition and reuse of all available organic resources,” recalled Alexander Ostrovsky, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Invitro and co-founder of 3D Bioprinting Solutions. “We are proving that cultured meat can be produced anytime, anywhere, under any conditions,” said Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO Didier Toubia. “In space, we don’t have the 10000-15000 liters of water needed to grow 1 kilogram of beef.”

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