Scaling-Up Cultivated Meat Production: From Lab Flasks to Industrial Bioreactors

Manzoki et al. review the complexities of moving cultivated meat production from lab flasks to industrial bioreactors. The chapter covers raw-material supply and storage (culture media components, cells, high-quality water, microcarriers, scaffolds), cell cultivation (bioreactor design, mode of operation, sterilization, monitoring, and control), and downstream development (formulation, stability, packaging, reproducibility). It highlights new scale-up parameters such as gas exchange, shear stress, heat and mass transfer, mixing, and foaming, and stresses the need to optimize these factors while identifying constants to maintain. Sustainability and economic considerations are discussed as essential to achieving cost-effectiveness at larger scales, outlining the technoeconomic challenges and future developments required to translate cultured-meat production beyond pilot-scale experiments.

Overview

Scaling-Up Cultivated Meat Production: From Laboratory Flasks to Industrial Bioreactors, authored by Maria Clara Manzoki and colleagues, provides a comprehensive examination of the path from laboratory-scale cell culture to full-scale biomanufacturing. The chapter is anchored in the Bioprocess Engineering and Biotechnology context of the Federal University of Paraná and situates cultured meat as a field demanding integrated engineering, materials science, and economic analysis to realize commercial viability. It emphasizes that the leap from bench-top flasks to industrial bioreactors is not purely a matter of increasing volume, but a transformation in process design, supply chains, and quality control that must preserve cell productivity while meeting regulatory, safety, and consumer expectations.

Key topics include the selection and management of raw materials—cultivation media components, cells, high-quality water, microcarriers, and scaffolds—and the end-to-end cultivation process. The authors outline how large-scale bioreactors introduce new parameters for gas exchange, shear stress, heat and mass transfer, mixing, and foaming. These factors affect cell viability, growth rates, and product consistency, necessitating robust optimization across process conditions, platform technologies, and control strategies. The discussion also covers downstream processing and final product development, including formulation, stability, packaging, and reproducibility, which are critical to achieving a commercially appealing cultured-meat product.

“Upscaling the production of cultured meat from laboratory flasks to an industrial scale is undeniably a great challenge” - Maria Clara Manzoki

Scale-Up Challenges and Parameter Management

The chapter argues that moving to pilot and industrial scales introduces a suite of new, interconnected challenges. Gas transfer efficiency, oxygen delivery, carbon dioxide removal, and gas-liquid mass transfer become dominant design considerations, while mechanical forces such as shear stress and turbulent mixing influence cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation. Foaming control, temperature regulation, and nutrient distribution require advanced monitoring and automation to maintain consistent productivity across large reactor volumes. The authors advocate for a systematic parameter-control strategy that identifies what must remain invariant during scale-up and what may be adapted to scale-specific conditions, highlighting the need for scalable modeling and real-time analytics to bridge bench-top results with industrial performance.

“The shift to large-scale bioreactors introduces several novel parameters that must be taken into account, such as gas exchange, shear stress, heat and mass transfers, mixing, and foaming” - Ariane Fátima Murawski de Mello

Materials, Process Design, and Quality

Beyond bioreactor physics, the chapter delves into the supply-chain aspects of scale-up, including media formulation, sterility management, and the procurement of scalable scaffolds and microcarriers. It emphasizes process reliability, reproducibility, and product stability as core determinants of market acceptance. The authors also discuss the importance of robust downstream processing and formulation strategies to ensure a stable, appealing final product that can withstand distribution and storage realities at industrial scales.

“Sustainability and economic aspects are pivotal for cost-effectiveness as scale increases” - Carlos Ricardo Soccol

Technoeconomics and Outlook

The final sections explore the technoeconomic landscape of upscaled cultured meat production, outlining the cost drivers, capital investments, and operating expenses associated with industrialization. The authors argue that achieving cost-competitiveness will require integrated approaches spanning bioreactor technology, media efficiencies, supply-chain optimization, and regulatory pathways. They frame scaling-up as a multidisciplinary challenge that combines bioprocess engineering with sustainability assessments and economic modeling, aiming to extend cultured meat from pilot lines to fully commercial production while maintaining product quality and environmental benefits. The chapter closes with a call for continued research, collaboration, and the development of standardized scaling frameworks to accelerate market-ready outcomes in the cultured-meat sector.

“Expanding cultured meat production beyond pilot scales requires integrated strategies across supply chains and process controls” - Walter José Martínez-Burgos