Canada Research Chair for Ning Xiang Leads Alberta Lab’s Pilot Cultivated Meat Production

Ning Xiang, Canada’s first Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Cellular Agriculture, is overseeing a CFI‑funded renovation to build a cell‑culture lab at the University of Alberta, advancing pilot‑scale cultivated meat research. Xiang, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences (ALES) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, has been named Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Cellular Agriculture. New Harvest describes her as Canada’s first dedicated cellular agriculture professor. She is now overseeing a renovation, funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), to create a dedicated cellular agriculture lab within her agriculture‑focused department. Her research program covers animal cell culture, food‑compatible scaffolds, bioreactor systems, and recycling of cell culture media to reduce the cost of cultivated meat production. Xiang joined ALES in September 2024 after a selection process run with New Harvest, which was part of the university’s 2022 partnership to establish an Institute of Cellular Agriculture. Before her appointment, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture under David Kaplan and co‑founded the startup CellX. In an interview published by New Harvest, Xiang said her group has secured an NSERC Discovery Grant among other funding. The team now includes eight students working on cell line development, edible scaffolds, media formulation and recycling, bioprocessing, and consumer and sensory research. Two PhD students, Bowen Wang and Hannah Chang, are funded through New Harvest’s Cellular Agriculture Prairies Ecosystem (CAPE) project. Wang is developing bovine cell lines for meat production and Chang for fat. CAPE received CAD 1 million from PrairiesCan and a further CAD 500,000 from Alberta Innovates in 2025. Xiang told New Harvest that the CFI grant is paying for a renovation to create a dedicated cellular agriculture lab. Her department, which is oriented toward food science, previously had no such facility. Her longer‑term goal is to move work from that lab onto a pilot‑scale cultivated meat production line. She has also assembled a network of 20 to 30 principal investigators across the university, from food science and engineering to biology and computing science. The group plans to apply for funding jointly as a first step toward a formally recognized centre or institute. Xiang identified a structural obstacle for academic researchers: many Canadian grants for joint university‑industry projects require matching contributions from companies. Young cultivated meat startups rarely have spare cash for long‑term research, so academic groups have few industry partners able to unlock that funding. She said organizations such as New Harvest have helped cover research that would otherwise go unfunded. Xiang will speak in Edmonton on November 4 as part of BioAlberta’s Bioeconomy Guild event series. “I believe we need more funding mechanisms that recognize the unique challenges of emerging food technologies and support innovation before a mature industry is established,” she said.

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