Bridging biofabrication and bioreactor-based maturation in muscle tissue engineering

Engineering functional skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscle tissues requires the integration of advanced biofabrication technologies with physiologically relevant maturation strategies. However, biofabrication and bioreactor development have often been considered separately, leaving the benefits of integrated construct-bioreactor design incompletely understood. This review provides an integrated overview of biofabrication and bioreactor-based maturation strategies for muscle tissue engineering. We discuss how muscle-specific requirements influence biomaterial selection, construct architecture, and stimulation approaches, and summarize recent advances in biofabrication and mechanical, electrical, perfusion, and multimodal bioreactor systems. Finally, we highlight key challenges and opportunities in construct-bioreactor co-design and argue that integrating biofabrication with tissue-specific bioreactor conditioning will be critical for translating structural complexity into functional muscle tissues.