Cultured beef: from small biopsy to substantial quantity.

Cultured meat is an emerging technology with the potential to solve huge challenges related to the environmental, ethical, and health implications of conventional meat production. Establishing the basic science of cultured meat has been the primary focus of the last decade but it is now feasible that cultured meat products will enter the market within the next 3 to 4 years. This proximity to market introduction demands an evaluation of aspects of the cultured meat production process that have not yet been outlined or discussed in significant detail. For example, one technological approach for the production of cultured meat uses adult muscle stem cells, the limited proliferative capacity of which necessitates repeated collection of tissue samples via biopsies of living donor animals. The selection of donor animals and the details of biopsy processes must be optimized, as this is a key bottleneck in the cultured meat production process. The number of stem cells harvested from a biopsy, together with their proliferative capacity, determines a 'multiplicity factor' achieved by a cultured meat production process, thus dictating the reduction in number of animals required to produce a given quantity of meat. This article considers potential scenarios for these critical upstream steps, focusing on the production of cultured beef as an example. Considerations related to donor selection and details of the biopsy process are discussed in detail. The practicalities of various scenarios for cultured beef production, the health of donor animals, and regulatory issues associated with the safety of cultured meat for consumers are also considered. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Nutrition and the ageing brain: Moving towards clinical applications.

The global increases in life expectancy and population have resulted in a growing ageing population and with it a growing number of people living with age-related neurodegenerative conditions and dementia, shifting focus towards methods of prevention, with lifestyle approaches such as nutrition representing a promising avenue for further development. This overview summarises the main themes discussed during the 3rd Symposium on "Nutrition for the Ageing Brain: Moving Towards Clinical Applications" held in Madrid in August 2018, enlarged with the current state of knowledge on how nutrition influences healthy ageing and gives recommendations regarding how the critical field of nutrition and neurodegeneration research should move forward into the future. Specific nutrients are discussed as well as the impact of multi-nutrient and whole diet approaches, showing particular promise to combatting the growing burden of age-related cognitive decline. The emergence of new avenues for exploring the role of diet in healthy ageing, such as the impact of the gut microbiome and development of new techniques (imaging measures of brain metabolism, metabolomics, biomarkers) are enabling researchers to approach finding answers to these questions. But the translation of these findings into clinical and public health contexts remains an obstacle due to significant shortcomings in nutrition research or pressure on the scientific community to communicate recommendations to the general public in a convincing and accessible way. Some promising programs exist but further investigation to improve our understanding of the mechanisms by which nutrition can improve brain health across the human lifespan is still required.