Diana Marques, a Bioengineering PhD student at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB), holds a plate with four lab-grown sea bass fillets created using 3D bioprinting, a world-first achievement by Técnico researchers. In 2019, Diana came up with the idea of making sushi in the lab as part of a project for the Entrepreneurship curricular unit. Since then, the project has expanded, leading to multiple master’s theses (including Diana’s) and doctoral theses. The team has grown from four researchers in 2020 to around 15, and the results of their work are impressive.
“The past two years have seen significant progress”, says Frederico Ferreira, a professor at Técnico and a researcher at iBB who has been leading the research projects – one of the projects, the Algae2Fish project, received 215,000 euros in funding in 2022 from the non-governmental organisation Good Food Institute. Initially, the researchers started by producing sashimi (thinly sliced fish), but now they can produce fillets up to six centimetres thick, with the characteristic texture of the fish. It’s not just the texture that is similar to ‘conventional’ fish – depending on the microalgae selected for the inks used in the bioprinter, it is possible to produce the desired smell. “Sometimes, when you enter the laboratory, it already smells like fish; some people joke and say we’re in a fish market”, says the researcher.
In addition to the advances in scientific research, there is another motivation – environmentally, the production of fish and meat in laboratories could be a more ecological alternative to the livestock and fishing industries. Frederico Ferreira talks about a “fourth agricultural revolution”. “People will have to eat a bit more vegetables and a bit less animal protein, so they’re probably will have to look for other animal proteins. This is where we come in: we must provide people with animal protein that doesn’t sacrifice animals and has a lower environmental impact”, explains the professor.
Using a 3D printer to produce food from cells
The production process in the laboratory avoids the more polluting stages traditionally associated with “conventional” processes for obtaining animal protein. “We start with cells, usually stem cells, which have the potential to differentiate into cell types found in meat and fish, such as muscle and fat cells”, explains Diana Marques, emphasing that these cells are obtained without animal suffering, one of the motivations that led her to carry out research in this area.
“Then comes the food processing – we have a biomass, a huge collection of cells, and we can put them all together and create simple products such as fish nuggets or nuggets. If we want to make a more structured product – and if we apply techniques such as 3D bioprinting – we can make that fish nugget or a steak”, she adds.
In this 3D bioprinting, two “ingredients” are essential – a bioprinter capable of completing the task and bioinks suitable for human consumption. The bioinks were developed by Diana during her master’s thesis, while the bioprinter is the result of the work of Afonso Gusmão, a PhD student at Técnico and a researcher at iBB. During his master’s thesis, Afonso adapted a commercial 3D printer for this project. ‘My aim is to test the various inks that have been developed – each one has parameters such as viscosity and printing temperature that are different from the previous one’, he explains. Instead of using microplastics, the printer works with bioinks containing sea bass cells, some for muscle material and others for the fat naturally present in sea bass fillets.
As a PhD researcher, Afonso is now developing bioreactors inside which cell cultures are exposed to small electric shocks, stimulating them to align themselves along a specific direction (electrospinning). “If we are creating these fibres, we may be offering textures and structure to the fillet that we wouldn’t be able to achieve otherwise”, he comments, indicating a potentially positive impact on the consumer experience.
Once the muscle and fat cells have been grown in the lab, they will be incorporated into the respective bio-inks and inserted into the syringes for the bioprinter to create the fillet. The next steps for this lab-grown food depend on legislation and consumer interest.
Next steps – “being able to sell” and “wanting to buy”
“We live in a democracy and people have the freedom to eat whatever they want – far be it from us to change that”, explains Frederico Ferreira. “Our goal is to ‘educate’ people and create high-quality products that they will want to include in their diet”, he explains. Based on the so-called ‘adoption curve’, which shows the rate at which people adopt a new product or concept, the professor believes that “in five years it could begin to have an impact on the market”.
For that, we have to wait for developments not only in technical terms but also in terms of European legislation. Countries such as Singapore and the United States have already approved this type of cultivated food onto the market, although only for animal feed. “Currently, in Europe, public tasting is not allowed except in the Netherlands; more countries need to pass laws that allow consumers to taste products safely”, explains the iBB researcher, who argues that “for clarity and transparency with consumers, it is important that they can taste the product”. “EU member states need to make this a national priority”, he adds, pointing out that countries like China have already done so.
For now, the team has its next objective well defined – a collaboration with the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), under which the first tests of these prototypes will be carried out. A panel qualified in fish characterisation and tasting (usually to compare deep-sea and farmed fish) will try out these printed fillets.
“Right now, we need a sustainable way of producing meat and fish”, recalls Diana Marques. Frederico Ferreira supports this idea. “We’re going to cultivate animal tissue for consumption so that we can meet the future [food] demands in a more sustainable way”.
