Trace, Angela, Wankell, Miriam, McFarlane, Craig, and Hebbard, Lionel (2026) From Cell Line to Fillet: A Review of Biological and Engineering Strategies in Cultivated Seafood. Food Bioengineering. (In Press)

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Abstract

Due to the increasing world population, traditional commercial sources of protein will soon be insufficient to meet global nutritional demands. To address this and other anthropological effects, including carbon emissions, land and freshwater usage and overfishing associated with traditional agriculture, aquaculture and wild‐catch fisheries, cultivated meats have been proposed as a novel protein source, rather than animal slaughter. Currently, despite significant investment, the cultivated seafood industry is floundering to scale production. This is due to technological failures to adapt cells to suspension for integration into bioreactors, lack of appropriate scaffold materials and scalable techniques to support eventual product formation. To overcome these issues, it is crucial for the industry to choose methodologies and materials that are tailored to species‐specific cells to compensate for differences in the sensitivity and behaviour of cells within different bioreactor systems.Moreover, for regulatory approval and consumer acceptance, appropriate materials and edibility are required for selecting scaffolds. Ultimately, the cultivated seafood industry must address the current limitations in production efficiency to become a viable alternative food source. To do so, the industry should focus on using the recent advancements from both industry and academia including methods and technologies in tissue engineering and the adaption of cells to suspension. This review focuses on cultivated seafood as an alternative to aquaculture and wild‐catch fisheries and discusses the bottlenecks and potential solutions for the industry to upscale production.

Item ID:	92004
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2770-2081
Keywords:	bioreactors; cultivated seafood; scaffolds; suspension culture
Copyright Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). Food Bioengineering published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. on behalf of State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology.
Date Deposited:	26 May 2026 01:54
FoR Codes:	30 AGRICULTURAL, VETERINARY AND FOOD SCIENCES > 3006 Food sciences > 300607 Food technology @ 50% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3101 Biochemistry and cell biology > 310102 Cell development, proliferation and death @ 50%
SEO Codes:	24 MANUFACTURING > 2406 Environmentally sustainable manufacturing activities > 240699 Environmentally sustainable manufacturing activities not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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