Circular Cell Culture

With conventional meat production causing various environmental challenges, animal cell cultivation is seen as valuable source of proteins in the future. The increasing rates of meat consumption require large-scale production of mammalian cells, which in turn consume great amounts of culture media. However, such mass production is constrained by increased amounts of both generated biowaste and nutrient supply.

The objective of the present study is to evaluate the environmental impacts of an innovative method of mammalian cell cultivation in the Circular Cell Culture (CCC) system using life cycle assessment (LCA). In the CCC system, the cyanobacteria Anabaena is cultivated in a biochamber, utilizing photosynthesis and nitrogen and phosphorus from the myoblast culture waste medium. The harvested microalgae are treated with solid acid, and the resulting supernatant, obtained via centrifugation, is used for mammalian cell (QM 7) cultivation.

This project is a collaboration between the research groups Future Sustainable Food Systems from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, TWIns, Japan.