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====Advantages====
There are several benefits of using soft and stretchable MEAs instead of traditional rigid or merely flexible MEAs. With traditional MEAs, the cells are grown on a rigid [[Substrate (biology)|substrate]] material such as [[glass]] or [[plastic]]. This environment is very different from the natural environment of the cells in the body, which causes the cells to behave differently [[in vitro]] than in their natural environment [[in vivo]]. This is a major issue for the use of rigid MEAs for pre-clinical research because the goal of pre-clinical research is to predict treatment outcomes in humans.
The advantages of using sMEAs for pre-clinical research are twofold. First, the stiffness of the substrate that the cells are grown on matches more closely the stiffness of the cellular environment in the body. Second, sMEAs enable the application of [[biomechanical]] cues to the cells, which affect cellular function and behavior. Both of these advantages reduce the mismatch of the environment of cells in vitro and in human body, i.e., the cells behave more similarly in vitro as they do in vivo, which improves the value of [[pre-clinical research]] to predict clinical outcomes, thus potentially reducing the failure rate of clinical trials (now >95%).
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