Growing cells outside the body requires more than nutrients. Cells depend on a complex mix of biological signals that guide them when to grow, mature, and organize into tissues.
Recreating that environment is one of the quiet challenges in cellular agriculture and tissue engineering. Integriculture’s CulNet system explores a different approach: instead of adding many purified growth factors to media, it uses living feeder cells that naturally produce the signals needed for other cells to thrive.
A Living Network for Cell Cultivation
At the center of the CulNet approach is a network of connected culture chambers. One chamber contains the target cells that researchers want to grow, whether muscle, fat, or other cell types. Other chambers contain feeder cells that secrete cytokines, proteins, and signaling molecules into the circulating culture medium.
As the medium flows through the system, these signals reach the target cells and influence their behavior. By adjusting how the chambers interact and how the medium circulates, the biological environment can be tuned over time. In practice, this means a single system can support different stages of cell culture, from proliferation to differentiation, while reducing reliance on individually added growth factors.
Integriculture has already implemented this concept in its Advanced C-CulNet system, a production platform designed to generate conditioned medium at industrial scale. By using living feeder cells to produce many of the signals normally supplied through expensive growth factors, the system aims to create a more stable and cost-effective cultivation environment as well as improving consumer acceptability by not using biologics or bioengineering.
The concept is simple to visualize: one group of cells produces the biological instructions, while another group follows them.
The Advanced C-CulNet system installed at Integriculture’s production facility. The platform is designed for the commercial-scale production of conditioned medium, a “cell-cultured serum” that can replace expensive growth factors in cell culture.
If you are developing cell-based products and looking for a reliable cultivation approach, Integriculture works with partners to build and scale CulNet-based systems.
Building Tools for the Cell Agriculture Ecosystem
Integriculture focuses on building practical infrastructure for cellular agriculture and related fields.
The CulNet concept has already been demonstrated in functioning cultivation systems, where feeder-cell networks can support cell growth by producing key signaling molecules. In parallel, Integriculture has made progress toward commercialization through its broader platform, including regulatory approval in Singapore for cultivated foie gras ingredients produced using its culture technology.
CulNet represents a next step in this development trajectory, as the company continues working toward scalable, cost-effective cultivation systems.
Beyond the technology itself, Integriculture is also coordinating a broader industry effort through the CulNet® Consortium. The initiative brings together partners across sectors including chemicals, biologics, materials, food processing, engineering, information systems, and logistics. The goal is to explore how existing industrial capabilities can support the emerging supply chain for cellular agriculture.
Rather than focusing on a single product, Integriculture is building both the tools and the industrial network needed to support the growth of cell-based production.
The Contributors
Progress in cellular agriculture comes from the work of many researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs across the world. We would like to thank everyone advancing the field. In particular, appreciation goes to inventors Yuki Hanyu and Ikko Kawashima, whose work at Integriculture has contributed to the development of the CulNet system and related technologies.
Across food, biomaterials, and tissue engineering, building reliable and scalable culture environments remains a shared challenge.