Review on bioreactors in tissue engineering

Abstract

Tissue engineering is an exciting field that aims to create regenerative alternatives to harvest tissues for transplantation. In this move towards success needs delivering the tissue progenitor cells over biocompatible three dimensional (3D) scaffolds (natural or synthetic). It is clear that scaffold design is increasing in complexity and becoming smarter. The only obstacles to the generation of functional tissues and their widespread clinical use are related to a limited understanding of the regulatory role of specific physico-chemical culture parameters on tissue development and the high manufacturing costs of the few commercially available engineered tissue products. By enabling reproducible and controlled changes of specific environmental factors, bioreactor systems provide both the technological means to reveal fundamental mechanisms of cell function in a 3D environment and the potential to improve the quality of engineered tissues. In this context we evaluated various sophisticated dynamic bioreactors for fabricating organs of given clinical application. In comparison with other bioreactors perfusion system is amenable to multiple tissue engineered construct production, uniform tissue development, and yet is simple to operate and can be scaled up for potential clinical use. 