Engineered Whole Cut Meats Assembled of Cell Fibers Constructed by Tendon-Gel Integrated Bioprinting

Abstract With the current interest in artificial meat, mammalian cell-based cultured meat has mostly been in minced form. There is thus still a high demand for artificial steak-like meat. Herein, we demonstrate in vitro construction of engineered steak-like meat assembled of three types of edible bovine cell fibers, such as skeletal muscle, adipose, and blood capillary fabricated by tendon-gel integrated printing (TIP) technology. Because actual meat is an anisotropically aligned assembly of the fibers connected to tendon for the actions of contraction and relaxation, TIP was discovered to construct the fiber assembly connecting tendon gels with engineered structures. In this study, a total of 72 fibers comprising 42 muscle, 28 adipose, and 2 blood capillary were constructed by TIP and subsequently assembled to fabricate a steak-like meat with a diameter of 5 mm and a length of 10 mm by consulting histological images of actual Wagyu beef steak. The TIP discovered here could be a powerful manufacturing technology for fabrication of the desired types of steak-like cultured meats.