Design and development of a bioreactor for ligament tissue engineering

Abstract

Mechanical signals applied in-vitro to cell-scaffold construct may induce the formation of ligament-like structure having in-vivo functional properties. To explore this hypothesis, a novel bioreactor was designed to study the in vitro effect of biaxial cyclic mechanical stimulation on the adhesion, differentiation and proliferation of rabbit bone marrow stromal cells (rBMSCs) loaded on silk scaffolds in four reactor vessels, with enhanced environmental and perfusion fluidic control under sterile conditions. The cell seeding and perfusion system is made of polycarbonate and is translucent. The whole system consists of four cell seeding chambers that can be incorporated into the perfusion system whereby mechanical stimulation is provided by eight stepper motors connected to the bioreactor. The cell culture medium continuously circulates through a closed-loop system. We thus developed a cell seeding device for static and dynamic seeding of rBMSCs onto a tubular silk scaffold and a closed-loop perfused bioreactor for long-term mechanical conditioning.