Muscle That Builds Itself

Cultivated meat has long aimed to replicate more than just flavor. Texture, alignment and internal architecture define how real muscle feels and cooks. However, producing that structure in vitro has been a stubborn bottleneck. The newest work from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory suggests that pluripotent stem cells may do more of the assembly work on their own than many engineering approaches require. This is crucial for a field balancing biological fidelity and manufacturing efficiency. 

The patent describes a serum-free method that steers ungulate embryonic stem cells through the stages needed to become mature muscle fibers (WO2025181020A1). Instead of starting from adult stem cells, which tire out quickly, the method uses pluripotent cells that can divide indefinitely and follow a broader range of developmental paths. Under the right sequence of developmental biochemical signals including growth factors (For example:  bFGF is added to stem cells to induce presomitic mesoderm cells (PSMs), next they add HGF to PSMs to induce myoblasts; and contacting the myoblasts with suitable concentrations of HGF and IGF to induce myocytes and muscle fibers and so on..), these cells form small aggregates that elongate into muscle bundles while also producing endothelial cells and neurons.

You can imagine a tiny piece of tissue where fibers align like threads in a rope and capillary-like networks appear between them. This approach addresses two limitations in cultivated steaks: growing thick tissue without starving the core and integrating multiple cell types that give muscle its realistic texture and function.

EMBL has a long-standing focus on understanding how tissues form during early development. Much of their work centers on recreating these processes in vitro, from organoids to engineered cell assemblies. Rather than assembling muscle piece by piece, EMBL is exploring how controlled developmental cues can coax cells to organize themselves. For cellular agriculture, this offers a complementary path to strategies like bioprinting and scaffold engineering, potentially reducing complexity while improving biological fidelity.

Congratulations to the inventors Miki Ebisuya, Marina Sanaki-Matsumiya and Jun Wu for their contribution to the field.

Lab Grown Technologies highlights meaningful innovations shaping the future of cellular agriculture and tissue engineering. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/lab-grown-technologies/

This article is authored by biomedical scientist Nidhi Mote, PhD, whose work spans bioengineering, mechanobiology, and cell biology. She completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute and is excited to connect with others in cellular agriculture, synthetic biology, tissue engineering, and advanced in vitro systems.

This post is based on publicly available information. Lab Grown Technologies is not affiliated with the inventors or organizations mentioned.