Bioprinting functional fat – adipocytes as the next frontier in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and cultivated meat

Adipose tissue is a vital component in both regenerative medicine and cultivated meat, yet the selection of the cellular starting material remains an underexplored determinant of adipose construct performance in bioprinting. This mini-review explores next-generation adipose tissue engineering, emphasizing bioprinting functional fat with adipocytes at the intersection of these two fields. While current adipose bioprinting strategies predominantly rely on adipose-derived stem or stromal cells for their expandability and manufacturability, mature adipocytes (ACs) and microfat emerge as alternative cell sources with distinct advantages in functional fidelity, metabolic relevance, and immediate tissue-like behavior. However, these approaches impose fundamentally different biological and engineering constraints that directly influence biofabrication strategy, biomaterial design, and translational potential. This mini review offers a structured comparison of mature adipocyte-, progenitor-, and microtissue-based strategies, highlighting features that influence biofabrication and applicability. Scalability is identified as a major bottleneck in translation, with a focus on process robustness, batch-to-batch reproducibility, and manufacturing concepts relevant to preclinical test systems, clinical applications, and large-scale cultivated meat (CM) production. By proposing a cell-source-guided framework for adipose bioprinting, this mini review aims to provide a practical decision-making perspective for developing next-generation adipose constructs.