Potential of mechanobiology principles for cultivated meat development: Lessons from tissue engineering

Mechanobiology, driven largely by mechanotransduction, is the process by which cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, converting physical cues into intracellular signaling pathways that regulate cell behavior and fate. Foundational 2D studies have established how substrate stiffness and topography regulate cytoskeletal tension and transcriptional programs, while 3D studies highlighted the role of physical cues in tissue morphogenesis and maturation. These principles have been translated in regenerative medicine through scaffolds with tunable mechanical properties that actively guide cell proliferation, alignment, and differentiation into functional tissues. Despite its proven value in biomedical contexts, mechanobiology remains underutilized in cultivated meat application. Current scaffolds mainly serve as passive support for cell attachment and texture formation, with myogenic or adipogenic differentiation still heavily reliant on expensive small molecules. This dependency increases the production complexity, cost, and regulatory hurdles. This review proposes that mechanobiology represents an underexplored but potentially transformative strategy to address these barriers. Bio-instructive, food-grade scaffolds designed to activate mechanosensitive pathways could drive lineage-specific differentiation via physical cues alone, reducing the dependency on biochemical inducers while enhancing tissue maturation. Unlike regenerative medicine, which requires Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)-grade materials, cultivated meat scaffolds are limited only by food safety standards, allowing broader use of low-cost biomaterials and scalable fabrication processes to deliver mechanical cues. By synthesizing mechanobiological insights from tissue engineering, this review evaluates their translational relevance to cultivated meat and highlights opportunities to improve scalability, structural fidelity, and cost-effectiveness in next-generation cultivated meat production. • Mechanobiology offers a cost-effective strategy for cultivated meat production • Bio-instructive scaffolds guide muscle and fat cell fate via mechanosensing cues • Current cultivated meat scaffolds are passive and require costly chemical inducers • Integrate mechanobiology into scaffolds for scalable cultivated meat production