Seeing as we’re living in the future, you are free to buy 3D printers like the MakerBot that build objects out of plastic. That’s pretty nifty, but what if you could extrude not molten plastic, but biological cells? Then you’d be able to print a hamburger, and that’s what a Missouri-based startup called Modern Meadow wants to do. Thanks to a big grant that just came through, it might get the chance.
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel has delivered a check for $350,000 to Modern Meadow in hopes that it can take a technology originally developed for regenerative medicine, and bring it to the dinner table. The goal is to use a type of 3D printing to construct an edible meat replacement out of cultured cells.
If Modern Meadow can pull it off, it would change the way agriculture works. The environmental impact of raising large animals like cows for food is massive. The animals consume a great deal of food and water before the time comes when they can be eaten. The costs associated are just too high to be feasible in many parts of the world.
Growing synthetic meat has been a science fiction dream for years, though. It’s deceptively difficult to replicate the product we get from animals. Meat isn’t just wall-to-wall muscle cells — there is fat, connective tissue, and other cellular structures that give it the desired taste and texture. A 3D printer designed to one day build organs might be able to create a reasonable facsimile of a steak.
Modern Meadow believes that tissue printers will allow it to create an edible sample of synthetic meat that is more economically viable than the real thing. Whether or not it will satisfy the palate of humans is still up in the air.
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