Single step fabrication of muscle bundles for cultivated meat using mechanotransduction: a paradigm shift

Cultivated meat (CM) has emerged as a sustainable alternative to traditional livestock production however, commercialization remains constrained by several interconnected challenges, including the high costs of chemical differentiation media, and the complexity of multi-step scaffold-cell assembly processes. Cell expansion cost is an additional challenge that will be addressed by complementary efforts in the field. Here, we present a novel single-step, food-compatible wet-spinning platform that simultaneously integrates scaffold fabrication, stem cell encapsulation, and mechanotransducive stimulation, eliminating the need for exogenous soluble differentiation factors and post-fabrication cell seeding. This platform is fundamentally distinct from multi-step scaffold-cell assembly workflows reported in the literature, where scaffold fabrication, surface modification, cell seeding and biochemical myogenic differentiation induction are performed as sequential, independent operations. Using porcine adipose-derived stem cells (pADSCs) encapsulated within alginate-gelatin composite hydrogel microfibers, we demonstrate that scaffold stiffness and fabrication-induced shear stress alone are sufficient to drive myogenic progression toward terminal differentiation without any biochemical inducers. By harnessing mechanotransduction as the primary differentiation driver, this approach addresses key bottlenecks in CM manufacturing, including process simplification, cost reduction, and regulatory alignment through the use of food-safe, chemically defined materials. The resulting cultivated meat prototypes exhibited protein content, cooking behaviour, and textural properties approaching those of conventional pork loin. This work establishes a scalable, cost-efficient, and food-safe materials- and process-level framework for CM production driven by physical rather than biochemical cues.