Researchers at the University of Tokyo have grown chicken the size of a nugget in a lab. As we have had our fair share of lab-grown meats making the headlines, with some even licensed to be sold commercially, what makes this piece of chicken revolutionary and an extraordinary feat of engineering?

Weighing 11 grams, it’s the largest single chunk of artificial meat produced to date.

The engineered piece of chicken is 7 cm long, 4 cm wide, and 2.25 cm thick, making it the largest chunk of cultivated meat grown in a lab. Previously, lab-grown meat was limited to small, fragmented pieces, more like minced meat than a nugget or a steak.

At the heart of this breakthrough is a network of fibers that mimic the natural circulatory system.

The innovation lies in a custom-designed bioreactor containing over 1,000 semi-permeable, hollow fibers. These fibers are similar to those in dialysis machines, where they act as blood filters. Here, they transport oxygen and nutrients to living cells suspended in a gel.

One of the biggest challenges in producing lab-grown meat is keeping muscle cells alive as the tissue gets thicker.

In larger chunks, cells deep inside often don’t get enough oxygen or nutrients, causing them to die. That’s why most lab-grown meat projects stick to producing small, mince-like fragments.

However, with the hollow fibers running throughout the gel, the cells at the core are not deprived of oxygen and nutrients. This enables the growth of larger pieces of meat.

Professor Shoji Takeuchi, the project lead, explains that the fibers act like artificial blood vessels. The method helps to grow fibrous meat that is closer in replicating the mouth feel of conventional cuts than those currently available in the market.

The inedible fibers must be removed by hand, making the process tedious and production unscalable. 

In the lab, cultivated meats are nothing like the cuts that sit on the supermarket shelves. They are fragmented pieces of mushy meat. To turn them into nuggets and steaks, companies use plant-based binders or edible scaffolds to hold the pieces together. However, these methods fall short when it comes to replicating the structure and mouthfeel of real meat slabs.

This is where the Tokyo team’s bioreactor stands out.

In the future, we might also have the option to buy cultivated meat packed with nutrients, flavorings, or even sauces and spices, delivered through the same artificial circulatory network.

However, to make meat produced from this method fit for the market, researchers need to iron out a few challenges.

Firstly, the current iteration has inedible fibers running through the meat. These must be removed by hand to make the chicken fit for consumption. While researchers are working to develop an edible cellulose version, it’s still a work in progress. Also, as the meat hasn’t yet been produced with food-grade materials, it hasn’t been tested for taste.

Cost is another barrier. The process is expensive due to material and production demands. But Takeuchi believes food-grade, scalable systems could make it commercially viable within the next 5 to 10 years.