In order to form skeletal myotubes at scale and in a way that allows them to be packed together to form “meat,” researchers have used alternative strategies. For instance, in this video [
24], one strategy is to seed cells around a gelatin ring which promotes muscle fusion, contraction, and hypertrophy. By utilizing this method, individual myotube rings can be harvested and compacted together forming a shape similar to ground meat. More recent strategies focus on the use of plastic microcarriers which increase the surface area for cells to bind to and thus enable the culturing of larger numbers of cells in a smaller space [
25]. This technique has been used in the past for growth of mesenchymal stem cells [
26] and allows cells to grow in suspension for use in bioreactors which are more suitable for production at industrial scales.