Perfusion Bioreactor Fluid Flow Optimization

Abstract Tissue engineering aims to repair and regenerate damaged tissues by developing biological substitutes mimicking the natural extracellular matrix. It is evident that scaffolds, being a tri-dimensional matrix, are of extreme importance providing the necessary support for the new tissue. This new tissue is cultivated in vivo or in vitro in a bioreactor in which is placed the scaffold with cells. In order to control the cell culture process inside of a bioreactor it is essential to know the fluid flow inside and around the scaffold in order to know witch parameters must be controlled in order to obtain optimum conditions to cell culture. The wall shear stress must be adequate to the tissue to be cultivated, i.e., bone, muscle, cartilage and it is known that a proper stimulus is necessary to improve the cell proliferation inside the scaffold. This study considers a novel multifunctional bioreactor with a perfusion system module and it is intended to optimize the fluid flow within the chamber and the scaffold by assessing the turbulence kinetic energy and the velocity.