LONDON For $332,000, you might expect a burger to come with fries and a shake.

But it's no ordinary hamburger that two volunteer taste-testers tucked into in London on Monday. The meat was grown in a laboratory, from cattle stem cells.

The perfectly round patty was pan fried in sunflower oil and butter and then sampled by Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow, and food scientist Hanni Rutzler.

It was "close to meat," according to Rutzler, but she said she expected it to be softer and as the petri-dish beef contains no fat, it wasn't very juicy.

Schonwald also noted the absence of fat, which translated into a lesser flavor, "but the bite feels like a conventional hamburger"

Mark Post, whose team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the burger, hopes that making meat in labs could eventually help feed the world and fight climate change.

Monday's taste test, coming after five years of research, is a key step toward making lab meat a culinary phenomenon.

"For the burger to succeed it has to look, feel and taste like the real thing," Post said.

Post and colleagues made the meat from the muscle cells of two organic cows. The cells were put into a nutrient solution to help them develop into muscle tissue, growing into small strands of meat.

It took nearly 20,000 strands to make one 5-ounce patty, which for Monday's taste test was seasoned with salt, egg powder, breadcrumbs, red beet juice and saffron. The project cost $332,000.

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Burger grown from cow stem cells in laboratory put to taste test in London

French biotech entrepreneur Andre Choulika is working on an unusual and pricey project: A stem cell bank for adults. Choulika's stem cell bank, Sceil, is a new Singapore-based operation that claims to transform human skin cells into stem cells and then to store them for future medical procedures. For $60,000, clients can have a sample of their underarm skin punched at a local dermatologist, and sent to Singapore, where the cells are converted into stem cells over the course of a few months. The $60,000 only covers the first two years of storage.

Yes, it's expensive, but It's also one of the very first attempts to bank adult stem cells for future medical procedures.

Sceil, which operates in Singapore thanks to strict regulatory issues surrounding stem cell banking in the United States and the European Union, is based around the regenerative medicine theories of Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka. In a telephone conversation with Fast Company, Choulika expressed interest in future innovations--some decades away--that might come from Yamanaka's work. Yamanaka won his Nobel Prize, shared with researcher John Gurdon, for turning mature human cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells, though somewhat more difficult to work with than embryonic stem cells, avoid much of the ethical and legal issues that surround them.

The process of converting underarm cells into stem cells takes several months, Choulika told me. Skin cell samples are cultured to a volume of several billion, and these primary cells are saved as backups. Then some of these cells are cultured and converted into induced pluripotent stem cells over a period of three to four months. The conversion process lasts longer for different people. In some people it's more difficult, and in others it's easier. For good measure, Choulika emphasized that his company stores the stem cells in liquid nitrogen on three different continents.

Here is an infographic Sceil provides to potential clients to explain his business model:

Three different continents? Right there is the rub with Sceil. The company's target audience are ultra-affluent folks with lots of spending money--although Choulika didn't say as much, the 12-14 million people worldwide he cited as a target market jibes nicely with that--who are worried about their future health. They could be a target market for some world-changing medical experiments in foreign countries.

Regenerative medicine researchers worldwide have promised revolutionary results. Researchers at Wake Forest University are applying regenerative medicine techniques to 3-D print artificial organs on demand. Scientists at San Francisco State University are working on regenerating adult teeth. Then there are the more experimental efforts attempting to undo neurological damage and human aging with regenerative medicine. Once the FDA and other regulatory agencies approve hospital-ready versions of these technologies decades from now, Fast Company readers under 50 may have a shot at organ donations-on-demand in their lifetimes.

For Choulika, the stem cell bank is an experimental effort. Since moving to France from Lebanon, he founded Cellectis, a genome engineering firm closely tied to the Pasteur Institute. Cellectis' bread and butter is the much more lucrative field of conventional gene editing and intellectual property licensing for everything from big pharma to companies that make genetically modified foods. Stem cell banking is still nascent, and Sceil will be one of the very first banks targeting adult stem cell donations.

Sceil's success comes down to those millions of people with $60,000 extra to spend. If the world has enough mega-rich people to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a future shot at growing a new pancreas or reversing aging by a decade, Sceil has pretty decent odds.

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For $60,000, You Can Store Your Stem Cells in This Bank

Washington, Aug 06 (ANI): Stem cells found in mouth tissue have the ability to develop into different types of cells and can also relieve inflammatory disease, a new study has revealed.

The cells featured in the study by Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC were 'gingival mesenchymal' stem cells (GMSC), which are found in the gingiva, or gum tissue, within the mouth.

Professor Songtao Shi, the study's senior author said that gingiva has much less inflammatory reaction and heals much faster when compared to skin.

The study shows that there are two types of GMSC: those that arise from the mesoderm layer of cells during embryonic development (M-GMSC) and those that come from cranial neural crest cells (N-GMSC).

The cranial neural crest cells develop into many important structures of the head and face, and 90 percent of the gingival stem cells were found to be N-GMSC.

The two types of stem cells vary dramatically in their abilities. N-GMSC were not only easier to change into other types of cells, including neural and cartilage-producing cells; they also had much more of a healing effect on inflammatory disease than their counterparts.

When the N-GMSC were transplanted into mice with dextrate sulfate sodium-induced colitis - an inflamed condition of the colon - the inflammation was significantly reduced.

The study is published in the Journal of Dental Research. (ANI)

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Stem cells found in gum tissue may be best wound healers

Aug. 5, 2013 Stem cells found in mouth tissue can not only become other types of cells but can also relieve inflammatory disease, according to a new Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC study in the Journal of Dental Research.

The cells featured in the study are gingival mesenchymal stem cells (GMSC), which are found in the gingiva, or gum tissue, within the mouth. GMSC, like other stem cells, have the ability to develop into different types of cells as well as affect the immune system.

"Gingiva is very unique in our body," says Professor Songtao Shi, the study's senior author. "It has much less inflammatory reaction and heals much faster when compared to skin."

Previously, the developmental origins and abilities of GMSC hadn't been fully illustrated. This study shows that there are two types of GMSC: those that arise from the mesoderm layer of cells during embryonic development (M-GMSC) and those that come from cranial neural crest cells (N-GMSC). The cranial neural crest cells develop into many important structures of the head and face, and 90 percent of the gingival stem cells were found to be N-GMSC.

The two types of stem cells vary dramatically in their abilities. N-GMSC were not only easier to change into other types of cells, including neural and cartilage-producing cells; they also had much more of a healing effect on inflammatory disease than their counterparts. When the N-GMSC were transplanted into mice with dextrate sulfate sodium-induced colitis -- an inflamed condition of the colon -- the inflammation was significantly reduced.

The study indicates that the stem cells in the gingiva -- obtained via a simple biopsy of the gums -- may have important medical applications in the future.

"We will further work on dissecting the details of the gingiva stem cells, especially their notable immunoregulatory property," says first author Xingtian Xu, specialized lab technician at the Ostrow School of Dentistry Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology.

"Through the study of this unique oral tissue, we want to shed the light on the translational applications for improving skin wound healing and reducing scar formation."

The study was funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

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Stem cells found in gum tissue can fight inflammatory disease

Quick links to other pages on this site | Still can't find it? see Site Index A new Cultured Beef Burger made from cultured beef grown in a laboratory from stem cells of cattle, is held by the man who developed the burger, Professor Mark Post of Netherland's Maastricht University, during a the world's first public tasting event for the food product in London, Monday Aug. 5, 2013. The Cultured Beef could help solve the coming food crisis and combat climate change according to the producers of the burger which cost some 250,000 euros (US dlrs 332,000) to produce. (AP Photo / David Parry, PA) UNITED KINGDOM OUT - NO SALES - NO ARCHIVES

LONDON The food of the future could do with a pinch of seasoning and maybe some cheese.

Two volunteers who took the first public bites of hamburger grown in a laboratory gave it good marks for texture but agreed there was something missing.

I miss the salt and pepper, said Austrian nutritionist Hanni Ruetzler. U.S. journalist Josh Schonwald confessed to a difficulty in judging a burger without ketchup or onions or jalapenos or bacon. Both tasters shunned the bun, lettuce and sliced tomatoes offered to them to concentrate on the flavor of the meat itself.

Mark Post, the Dutch scientist who led the team that grew the meat from cattle stem cells, regretted having served the patty without his favorite topping: aged gouda cheese.

That would have enhanced the whole experience tremendously, he told The Associated Press. He said he was pleased with the reviews: It's not perfect, but it's a good start.

Post, whose team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the burger over five years, hopes that making meat in labs could eventually help feed the world and fight climate change although that goal is probably a decade or two away, at best.

The first (lab-made) meat products are going to be very exclusive, said Isha Datar, director of New Harvest, an international nonprofit that promotes meat alternatives. These burgers won't be in Happy Meals before someone rich and famous is eating them.

Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, announced that he funded the 250,000-euro ($330,000) project, saying he was motivated by a concern for animal welfare.

We're trying to create the first cultured beef hamburger, he said in a videotaped message. From there, I'm optimistic we can really scale up by leaps and bounds.

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Taste test: Lab-grown hamburger made from stem cells short on flavor