In this episode of the Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast, Sophie Letcher discusses her multidisciplinary path from neuroscience to her current role as a PhD student and New Harvest Research Fellow in the Kaplan Lab. Sophie details her innovative research into developmental bioelectricity, which explores how controlling the electrical charge of cells can instruct tissue growth and maturation. By manipulating these natural signals, she aims to enhance the efficiency of muscle development for cultivated meat, potentially leading to products with customized textures or improved nutritional profiles. The conversation also highlights Sophie’s work in entomoculture, the practice of growing meat… Read More »Sophie Letcher – New Harvest Fellowship Series

In this episode of the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show, John Yuen discusses his doctoral research at the Kaplan Lab, where he focuses on overcoming the challenges of nutrient and oxygen delivery in large-scale tissue constructs. John explains that while cells can typically only survive a few hundred microns from a source of nutrition, his work aims to develop perfused 3D tissue culture strategies to grow thicker pieces of muscle and fat. By investigating methods to create vascular-like networks within these tissues, he hopes to enable the production of whole cuts of meat with the complex structural organization found… Read More »John Yuen – New Harvest Fellowship Series

In this episode of the New Harvest Fellowship Series, Andrew Stout discusses his doctoral research at the Kaplan Lab where he applies synthetic biology and metabolic engineering to enhance the nutritional profile of cultured meat. Andrew details his pioneering work in engineering bovine cells to produce beta carotene, a plant nutrient not naturally found in beef, which acts as a powerful antioxidant. By integrating these phytonutrients directly into the meat, he aims to create a “superfood” version of cultivated protein that could potentially reduce the oxidative damage often associated with red meat consumption. Beyond the biochemistry of his research, Andrew… Read More »Andrew Stout – New Harvest Fellowship Series

In this episode of the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show, Natalie Rubio discusses her pioneering doctoral research at the Kaplan Lab, where she focuses on growing cultured meat from insect cells. Funded by a New Harvest fellowship, her work addresses some of the primary technical hurdles in cellular agriculture, such as the high cost and scaling difficulties of traditional mammalian cell culture. Natalie explains that insect cells are inherently robust and require simpler growth media, making them a potentially more sustainable and cost effective foundation for the next generation of alternative proteins. Beyond the technical aspects of her research,… Read More »Natalie Rubio – New Harvest Fellowship Series