Engineering anisotropic tissues: from structured scaffolds to magnetic actuation

, this review examines current material- and fabrication-based strategies for anisotropic tissue engineering. Approaches range from surface-engineered 2D substrates and architected polymeric scaffolds to hydrogel-based three-dimensional bioprinting, where micro- and nano-scale control over material properties enables guided cell alignment. In addition, emerging techniques exploit external forces, such as electrical or acoustofluidic stimuli, to induce structural micro-features, while others leverage the intrinsic self-organization capacity of cells. Among these externally driven approaches, magnetic-based strategies are particularly promising due to their ability to provide remote, spatially precise, and dynamically tunable control over tissue organization, both at the microscopic and macroscopic scales. This review highlights their capacity to generate anisotropic architectures unattainable by conventional methods and discusses the key challenges that must be addressed to establish magnetic-based approaches as a promising emerging strategy to expand the design space for engineering functional, anisotropic tissues.