Alongside her professorship at the University of Stuttgart, Kluger has also been Director of the Fraunhofer IGB since 2025. This institute, which has close to 400 staff, has become her own personal career incubator. After a brief flirtation with zoology, it was more than a fortunate twist of fate that took her to the IGB for her dissertation. “The institute was already developing skin models as an alternative to animal experimentation – and I’d realised I can’t bring myself to kill animals. I still wanted to do something practical, though, and that’s why I applied,” she explains. Kluger was accepted, and the topic of her dissertation, which was about using stem cells from the skin to create skin models, was to take all her career plans in a new direction. “I immediately delved into the available literature, reading some 50 publications. It was an important, relatively new topic, and it was exactly right for me,” she continues. As part of her doctoral studies, Kluger then focused on the question of how surfaces that have been modified topographically or chemically can influence the behaviour of keratinocytes, i.e. the cells of the epidermis – the top layer of the skin. This research was to be used as a basis for engineering implants or skin models. In 2013, Kluger was appointed head of the IGB’s Cell and Tissue Engineering Department and, in 2017, she became Professor of Tissue Engineering and Biofabrication at Reutlingen University.

“When it comes to cultured meat, everyone is just muddling along”

“We did a lot of work with human adipose tissue and the cells it contains, which resulted in me being invited to a conference about tissue engineering for cultured meat in 2018,” reports Kluger. “I was surprised how few people from the biomedical sector were there. Many of the steps are similar, but less complicated, because the tissue that is grown is ultimately eaten and not implanted,” she explains. However, Kluger also observed that what mattered most to the conference delegates was how these developments could benefit society – and that they were prepared to think outside the box. “Ethical aspects were already an integral part of my biomedical research. I wanted to reduce the amount of animal experimentation or even replace it altogether, thanks to better cell and tissue models for processes such as approving drugs,” says Kluger. “At that conference, I realised there was an entirely different demand for my field of research. It was something of existential importance that I hadn’t even been aware of up to that point – the need to carry on feeding billions of people in the future,” she continues.

Kluger is disappointed that there are still very few researchers who would consider either switching from biomedicine to the food sector or exploring the field as an additional research area. “New centres of excellence are needed for joint research on using biotechnology to produce meat. Even though this technically qualifies as food production, it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of conventional agriculture. The topic of alternative proteins is extremely important for our future, especially in terms of security of supply. Centres of this kind already exist in other European countries as well as the USA, Israel and China. In Germany, though, when it comes to cultured meat, everyone has just been muddling along so far. That’s not efficient,” she emphasises.

After the 2018 conference, Kluger recalls having to recognise that this topic didn’t exactly open doors. Obtaining funding was – and still is – anything but easy. Together with her team at Reutlingen University, she nevertheless succeeded in developing an approach that encourages the precursors of muscle and adipose cells to join together as they are growing. This enables them to form aggregates comprising tens of thousands of cells, which then develop into muscle and adipose cells that are identical to the ones in animal flesh. The scientists were already applying knowledge from the field of biofabrication to increase the mass of animal cells and scale up production. Kluger also thought about starting up a company at that time, but she ultimately decided against it, without completely ruling it out in the future. “I’d never start up a business alone, but I could imagine being a co-founder. My current position means I’m ideally placed to support start-ups,” she says.