Porcine extended pluripotent stem cell-derived somite-like mesoderm cells with Dox-driven PAX7 are robust seed cell resource for facilitating production of cultured meat

Abstract

Cultured meat technology, with its significant advantages of shortening meat production cycles, reducing natural resource consumption, minimizing the risk of zoonotic disease transmission, and enabling precise control over nutritional composition and texture, offers a novel alternative source for human meat consumption. One of the major challenges to produce cultured meat in large scale is how to establish high.quality seed cells, which should have long term proliferative capacities and are able to differentiate into muscles efficienuy with simple procedures. Here, we first established an engineered porcine expanded potential stem cells (Tet-On-PAX7 EPSCs) containing Tet-On regulated PAX7 gene. Then the Tet-On-PAX7 EPSCs were induced to somite-liKe mesodermal cells. These somite-liKe mesodermal cells can be expanded over 1025-fold even after 40 passages in-vitro culture while retaining strong myogenic potential. The somite-like mesodermal cells treated with DOX for one day would differentiate into muscle stem cells (Muses), and the later were able to differentiate into muscles with an efficiency of up to 90% within just 7 days in 11-FSDeDa without Dox. Moreover, when somite-liKe mesodermal cells were seeded on patterned scaffolds, microcarrier scaffolds, or cultured in anchorage-independent suspension, they maintained high efficiency in muscle differentiation, confirming their potential to be used as seed cells for scaled cultured meat production.