New line of bovine embryonic stem cells shows promise for lab-grown meat, biomedical applications

Among the first labs in the world to develop bovine embryonic stem cells, the UConn team’s work has distinct advantages

University of Connecticut

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Cindy Tian of the Department of Animal Science in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources works in her lab in the Agricultural Biotechnology Laboratory (ABL). Oct. 19, 2022. 

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Credit: . (Milton Levin/UConn Photo)

Researchers in UConn's College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources have developed a novel line of bovine embryonic stem cells, which have significant potential for a variety of new innovations, from lab-grown meat to models for human tissue replacement.

This work, led by Xiuchun “Cindy” Tian, professor of biotechnology in the Department of Animal Science, and her former and current graduate students Yue Su, Jiaxi Liu, and Ruifeng Zhao, was published in Stem Cells.

Understanding the Science

The researchers derived the pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) during the blastocyst stage of embryonic development. The blastocyst is a clump of cells with a fluid-filled center that is ready to implant in the uterus. They then grew the cells using feeder cells from mice and cultured them in a unique medium to keep them in the pluripotent state in the lab.

Few other labs in the world had developed bovine embryonic stem cells before, and UConn team’s work has distinct advantages.

“The advantage of our cells compared with previous publications is that we can generate the formative embryonic stem cells which can directly induce the primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLC), the precursor to sperm and eggs, for potential in vitro gametogenesis,” Liu says.

The team also developed a unique culture medium to produce higher-quality formative stem cells than previous efforts.

They used a commercially available base medium to which they added a number of supplemental small molecules, producing a unique mixture.

“Every animal species has different requirements to maintain pluripotency because the cells from different animals are all slightly different,” Zhao says. “If you use the medium from another animal species, it will not work. So we added some of the extra factors to make the system work better.”

This is a necessary step, as the cells do not naturally want to remain in their pluripotent stage – they want to continue developing into differentiated cells.

“Our cells, based on our special cocktail of medium, are maintained in such a more pluripotent state than previously reported studies,” Tian says. “This is an advance in the field.”

Tian’s lab had previously developed bovine induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). This method essentially took already differentiated cells and reprogrammed them to act like embryonic stem cells using genetic engineering.

Embryonic stem cells by contrast, do not contain any foreign genes. This is a major advantage for applications like lab-grown, or cultivated meat which is subject to regulatory frameworks regarding genetically modified products.

“That could be a safety issue or a regulatory issue,” Zhao says. “Therefore, we wanted to derive a clean pluripotent cell line just from the embryo.”

Using embryonic stem cells is also faster, easier, and more efficient because there is no reprogramming step. There is also less variation among cell lines.

A World of Possibilities

Cultivated meat is a promising response to concerns about the sustainability and ethics of traditional practices. These embryonic stem cells could be induced into muscle and fat cells to produce meat products like hamburgers.

In addition to cultivated meat, these cells can be used to produce human-relevant models for medical research including drug development and antibody screening.

They also have potential applications for human tissue replacement research. Many standard laboratory animals, like mice and rats, are small. This means that their tissues do not scale accurately to humans. Cows have the advantage of being a much larger animal.

These cells can also help develop disease-resistant cattle through genetic engineering as well as supporting studies of early bovine development.

The team is now working on finding a way to eliminate the need for mouse feeder cells, which pose a potential problem for commercializing lab-grown meat derived from these stem cells. This will mean all the growth and maintenance will be dependent on the medium and special culture dish coating.

They are also trying to develop a medium that will allow the cells to be maintained for more than a day at a time without medium replacement to reduce cost and culture waste, and consequently burden to the environment.

“We’re trying to develop longer-term cultures, basically a weekender medium,” Tian says.

By closely working with UConn Technology Commercialization Services (TCS), the group has filed for patent protection. Tian had also previously worked with TCS on the bovine iPSC cell line.

UConn’s TCS works with innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and industry partners to transform UConn discoveries into products, companies, and jobs that benefit society and fuel economic development. Through a coordinated approach between tech transfer, licensing, and startup teams, TCS helps advance promising technologies like Tian’s to market.

TCS is currently working with The Good Food Institute (GFI), which promotes available cell lines for cultured meat production, to list this new bovine ESC cell line. UConn’s bovine iPSC cell lines had been previously distributed around the world through the GFI site.

“We hope the bovine ESC cell line now available will further close the gap on this unmet need for bovine culture meat development,” says Ana Fidantsef, UConn industry liaison.

 

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Journal

Stem Cells

DOI

10.1093/stmcls/sxaf068 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Bovine formative embryonic stem cell plasticity in embryonic and extraembryonic differentiation

 

Oysters play unexpected role in protecting blue crabs from disease

Virginia Institute of Marine Science

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Professor Jeffrey Shields and Postdoctoral Research Associate Megan Tomamichel deploy a floating cage containing one of the experimental groups of juvenile crabs and oysters. 

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Credit: Lyndsey Smith

Oysters famously filter their surrounding water, but it turns out they are removing more than algae and excess nutrients. New research from William & Mary’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences & VIMS shows they can also reduce the spread of disease in nearby marine species, including Chesapeake Bay’s prized blue crabs.

Recently published in the journal Ecology, the study found that oyster filter feeding significantly reduced the transmission of Hematodinium perezi, a deadly parasite that commonly infects juvenile blue crabs in high-salinity coastal waters. In field experiments conducted on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, juvenile crabs placed near live oysters were about one-third less likely to become infected than crabs deployed without oysters.

“We know that oysters and oyster reefs provide a variety of ecological benefits, and that crabs are drawn to them for food and protection, but their ability to remove pathogens from the environment has not been well studied,” said Jeffrey Shields, a professor at the Batten School & VIMS who worked with his graduate student and several undergraduates on the study, including lead author Xuqing Chen, Ph.D. ’25.

The research team did experiments in both the lab and in the field. On sweltering summer days — when disease pressure from the parasite is at its greatest — they placed uninfected juvenile blue crabs in high-salinity coastal bays where the parasite is common. Some crabs were placed between live oysters, others between empty oyster shells and others were left unprotected. Only the presence of live oysters reduced infection risk, demonstrating that active filter feeding, not just the water’s interaction with the reef structure, was responsible for the effect.

The scientists replicated their experiments in the controlled setting of the Batten School & VIMS’ Seawater Research Lab. They found that when oysters were exposed to dinospores, an infectious, free-swimming stage of the parasite, they rapidly removed them from the water at rates similar to the removal of other plankton. On average, the oysters eliminated more than 60% of the parasites within an hour.

The researchers were also surprised to see a reduction in mortality among crabs in the treatment group, though they emphasized that there are too many variables to attribute the finding to the oysters alone.

“This study is part of a larger collaboration with the eventual goal of modeling these parasite-host interactions at the fisheries scale,” said Chen, who now works as a postdoctoral scientist at Station Biologique de Roscoff in France. “I would love to see more attention paid to disease dynamics in marine ecosystems, since they are complex and can have a huge impact on our fisheries.”

Scaling up the findings, with help from mathematics

Hematodinium infections can cause high mortality in juvenile blue crabs during warm summer months, with prevalence levels in some high-salinity bays approaching 100%. While the researchers expected the smallest crabs to be most susceptible to infection, they were surprised to document greater incidence, or new infections over time, among the larger juvenile crabs.

“This is something that had not been documented previously, and it has some interesting implications because the fishery removes approximately 40% of adult crabs from the system annually,” said Shields. “The juvenile crabs must fill that void, yet they are highly susceptible, so we need to think about how all of this comes together to increase or decrease the spread of disease.”  

The study is part of a broader, interdisciplinary effort at William & Mary that combines field ecology, laboratory experiments and mathematical modeling, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Shields and colleagues from the Batten School & VIMS are working with researchers in William & Mary’s applied mathematics and biostatistics community to explore how filter feeders like oysters influence disease dynamics at larger scales.

Those modeling efforts may help inform future fisheries management and oyster restoration strategies by clarifying when and where oyster filtration is most likely to suppress disease transmission, particularly in warming coastal systems.

“While we’ve made important strides in oyster restoration in the Bay, we know that populations are still far below historic levels. This represents a significant reduction in filtering capacity,” said Shields. “One of the beautiful features of mathematical modeling is that it allows us to scale this effect by orders of magnitude. That’s where we’re going next — trying to determine whether we can meaningfully influence this effect for overall ecosystem and fishery benefits.”

The full manuscript of the study is available on the Ecology website. 

Top: Lead author Xuqing Chen about to deploy crabs from the control group. Bottom: A close up of a cage from the experimental group showing containers with juvenile crabs sandwiched between oysters. Photos by Jeffrey Shields.

Credit

Jeffrey Shields

Journal

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.70281 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Filter feeding by oysters reduces disease transmission in a marine host–parasite system

Decoding environmental toxicity: a network-based view of chemical harm

Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences

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Overview of the AOP-ExpoVis framework for decoding environmental toxicity mechanisms. Schematic illustration of the AOP-ExpoVis workflow. The framework integrates chemical–gene, chemical–phenotype, disease–gene, and disease–phenotype associations to construct a weighted exposure–disease network. Key phenotypes are prioritized using a weighted phenotype–disease scoring strategy, clustered based on semantic similarity, and mapped onto adverse outcome pathways (AOPs). This network-based approach enables the identification of critical key events linking environmental chemical exposures to organ-specific toxic outcomes.

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Credit: Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

Environmental exposure to thousands of synthetic chemicals poses a growing challenge for public health, largely because their biological effects are complex, multiscale, and poorly characterized. This study presents a network-based framework that systematically connects chemical exposures to adverse health outcomes by integrating molecular, phenotypic, and disease-level data. Using a weighted network strategy, the research identifies key biological phenotypes that act as mechanistic bridges between chemicals and disease endpoints, and maps them onto established adverse outcome pathways (AOPs). The approach enables the prioritization of critical toxicological mechanisms across different disease types, offering a scalable way to interpret how diverse environmental chemicals disrupt biological systems and lead to adverse health effects.

Modern societies rely on an ever-expanding number of synthetic chemicals, many of which enter the environment with limited toxicological characterization. Traditional toxicity testing, which often focuses on single chemicals and isolated endpoints, cannot keep pace with the scale and complexity of real-world exposures. Although the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) framework provides a structured way to link molecular events to disease outcomes, existing AOPs are fragmented and biased toward well-studied mechanisms. At the same time, exposome research captures broad exposure–disease associations but often lacks mechanistic resolution. Based on these challenges, there is a clear need to develop integrative approaches that can systematically decode the biological mechanisms underlying environmental toxicity.

In a study published (DOI: 10.1016/j.ese.2026.100663) in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology on January 31, 2026, researchers from China Medical University and collaborating institutions introduced AOP-ExpoVis, a computational platform that integrates exposome data with AOP knowledge to predict chemical toxicity mechanisms. By combining chemical–gene–phenotype–disease associations into a weighted network, the framework enables the identification of key biological events linking environmental exposures to adverse health outcomes. The approach was validated across multiple chemical case studies, demonstrating its ability to uncover both shared and compound-specific toxicological pathways.

At the core of the study is a weighted phenotype–disease network that quantifies how strongly specific biological phenotypes connect chemical exposures to disease outcomes. The platform assigns each phenotype a composite score based on both statistical enrichment and network centrality, allowing biologically meaningful mechanisms to emerge while reducing bias from well-studied "hub" genes or chemicals. These prioritized phenotypes are then systematically mapped onto curated AOPs to generate testable mechanistic hypotheses.

The framework was applied to three representative environmental contaminants. For the flame retardant BDE-47, the analysis highlighted neurotoxicity pathways centered on aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) activation, which were subsequently validated using neuronal cell experiments and transcriptomic profiling. In the case of arsenic exposure, the network revealed convergent pathways linking the chemical to breast cancer, including established AhR-mediated mechanisms as well as less explored nuclear receptor signaling routes. For polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the model distinguished compound-specific liver toxicity patterns, separating inflammation-driven effects from disruptions in lipid metabolism.

Across all cases, computational predictions showed strong concordance with experimental or external transcriptomic evidence, demonstrating that network-based integration can reliably capture multiscale mechanisms of environmental toxicity.

"Environmental toxicity rarely follows a single linear pathway," said the study's corresponding author. "What we see instead is a network of interconnected biological events that differ across chemicals and disease contexts." The researcher explained that AOP-ExpoVis was designed to reflect this complexity by integrating diverse data sources into a unified analytical framework. "By prioritizing biologically central phenotypes rather than isolated molecular signals, the platform helps translate large toxicological datasets into mechanistic insights that are directly relevant for risk assessment and regulatory decision-making."

The AOP-ExpoVis framework offers practical implications for chemical safety evaluation and environmental health research. By rapidly prioritizing hazardous mechanisms from existing data, it can help regulators identify chemicals of concern and guide targeted experimental testing. The approach is particularly valuable for data-poor chemicals, complex exposure scenarios, and emerging contaminants where traditional toxicological evidence is limited. Beyond regulatory use, the platform provides researchers with a systematic tool to explore disease-specific toxicity pathways, supporting hypothesis generation and experimental design. As environmental exposures continue to diversify, network-based strategies like this may play an increasingly important role in protecting public health and advancing predictive toxicology.

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References

DOI

10.1016/j.ese.2026.100663

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ese.2026.100663

Funding information

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42407576), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFC1801204), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2025T180209), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2023MD744265) and the National Funded Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (No. GZC20233119).

About Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

Environmental Science and Ecotechnology (ISSN 2666-4984) is an international, peer-reviewed, and open-access journal published by Elsevier. The journal publishes significant views and research across the full spectrum of ecology and environmental sciences, such as climate change, sustainability, biodiversity conservation, environment & health, green catalysis/processing for pollution control, and AI-driven environmental engineering. The latest impact factor of ESE is 14.3, according to the Journal Citation ReportsTM 2024.

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Journal

Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

DOI

10.1016/j.ese.2026.100663 

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Weighted network analysis of adverse outcome pathways decodes the multiscale mechanisms of environmental toxicity