Cultured meat aims to manufacture genuine animal tissue from cells in vitro, displacing the environmental and ethical liabilities of livestock slaughter. Because the final product must reproduce the fibre architecture, fat marbling, and nutrition of conventional meat, the cell—its identity, proliferative ceiling, and differentiation fidelity—is the central determinant of feasibility. This review consolidates the stem cell biology of cultured meat from a tissue engineering perspective. We first compare the principal cell sources: muscle satellite cells, which offer authentic myogenicity but limited expansion; pluripotent stem cells, which are effectively immortal but require directed differentiation; and mesenchymal, adipogenic, and fibro-adipogenic progenitors that supply fat and connective tissue. We then examine how myogenic and adipogenic commitment is controlled through growth-factor and small-molecule signalling, serum-free medium design, and co-culture strategies that recreate the multicellular composition of meat. We next survey biomaterial scaffolds—edible microcarriers, hydrogels, and decellularized plant matrices—that organize stem cells into anisotropic, perfusable, macroscale constructs, drawing on scaffold-design principles from regenerative medicine. Finally, we address bioreactor scale-up, medium cost, cell-line stability, and regulatory translation. We argue that cultured meat will advance fastest when cell source, differentiation protocol, and scaffold architecture are co-designed rather than optimized in isolation.

Small‐diameter vascular grafts (≤ 6 mm) remain a critical unmet need in cardiovascular surgery, as autologous vessels are unavailable in up to 30% of patients requiring coronary or peripheral bypass. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have emerged as a transformative cell source for tissue‐engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs), offering unlimited self‐renewal, patient‐specific or universal donor potential, and the capacity to generate all vascular cell lineages. Recent breakthroughs—including iPSC‐derived grafts achieving 100% patency in allogeneic primate models and the first United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of an acellular tissue‐engineered vessel (SYMVESS, December 2024)—signal that clinical translation is accelerating. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of the iPSC‐to‐graft pipeline, encompassing vascular cell differentiation protocols, biomaterial scaffold design, immune engineering strategies for universal grafts, bioreactor maturation, preclinical evaluation, and the evolving clinical‐regulatory landscape. We critically evaluate how the convergence of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)‐based immune editing, advanced biomaterials, and scalable manufacturing is reshaping the field toward off‐the‐shelf vascular grafts. Finally, we identify remaining challenges in long‐term patency, thrombogenicity, and manufacturing scalability, and propose a translational roadmap for the next decade.