SECOND PLACE
Students: Josie Krepps
Project: Cellular Confinement in Hydrogels for Cultivated Meat
Major: Integrated Degree in Engineering, Arts & Sciences (IDEAS)
Advisor: Mark Snyder
Abstract
Cultivated meat, or meat grown from cells, has the potential to greatly reduce carbon emissions, water consumption, and land usage compared to industrial feedlots while also benefiting animal welfare. However, few whole-cut cultivated meat products are currently available. We propose to use 3D hydrogel scaffolds to seed stem cells and induce differentiation to muscle cells, myogenesis, as a method for growing whole-cut meat products. This work aims to induce myogenesis using three-dimensional confinement in a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogel enzymatically degraded by cell-secreted matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). PEG hydrogels are constructed on glass slides in channel geometries with high aspect ratios (8:1, 16:1, and 32:1) to mimic native muscle fibers. In proof-of-concept work using surrogate cells in place of animal cells, human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are encapsulated in these hydrogels and their organization is studied using fluorescent microscopy. Here, we qualitatively report that hMSCs encapsulated in confined PEG hydrogels stretch along the major axis of the gel, which is a precursor to myogenesis. Encapsulation and confinement do not negatively affect cell viability, indicated by the cell's digestion of green-fluorescent-protein after encapsulation and hydrogel degradation by cell-secreted MMPs. Interestingly, hMSCs may migrate to the bottom of the hydrogel, which we attribute to the steep change in stiffness at the glass-gel interface. This study provides preliminary confirmation that the initial stages of myogenesis can be induced mechanically using three-dimensional confinement, establishing a key design parameter that helps to advance the hydrogel platform toward whole-cut cultivated meat development.
About Josie Krepps
Josie is a senior Integrated Degree in Engineering, Arts & Sciences (IDEAS) honors student from Leesburg, VA studying at the intersection of food science and sustainability. At Lehigh, she spent two years as a Clare Boothe Luce Research Scholar studying how 3D confinement in synthetic hydrogels influences cell behavior with applications in cultivated meat. Her senior IDEAS project, "Trash Talk," is a tête-bêche booklet exploring the financial, environmental, health, and social impacts of transitioning to a sustainable lifestyle. She also spent one year as project manager of the Energy & Water Dashboard project, a website reducing energy-consuming behaviors by displaying campus building energy data, through Lehigh's Campus Sustainable Impact Fellowship. Josie has aspirations in alternative proteins and plans on attending graduate school for food science. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games and building mechanical keyboards, ranking among the top 0.5% of typists globally.