The Influence of Bioreactor Geometry and the Mechanical Environment on Engineered Tissues

A three phase model for the growth of a tissue construct within a perfusion bioreactor is examined. The cell population (and attendant extracellular matrix), culture medium, and porous scaffold are treated as distinct phases. The bioreactor system is represented by a two-dimensional channel containing a cell-seeded rigid porous scaffold (tissue construct), which is perfused with a culture medium. Through the prescription of appropriate functional forms for cell proliferation and extracellular matrix deposition rates, the model is used to compare the influence of cell density-, pressure-, and culture medium shear stress-regulated growth on the composition of the engineered tissue. The governing equations are derived in O’Dea et al. “A Three Phase Model for Tissue Construct Growth in a Perfusion Bioreactor,” Math. Med. Biol., in which the long-wavelength limit was exploited to aid analysis; here, finite element methods are used to construct two-dimensional solutions to the governing equations and to investigate thoroughly their behavior. Comparison of the total tissue yield and averaged pressures, velocities, and shear stress demonstrates that quantitative agreement between the two-dimensional and long-wavelength approximation solutions is obtained for channel aspect ratios of order 10−2 and that much of the qualitative behavior of the model is captured in the long-wavelength limit, even for relatively large channel aspect ratios. However, we demonstrate that in order to capture accurately the effect of mechanotransduction mechanisms on tissue construct growth, spatial effects in at least two dimensions must be included due to the inherent spatial variation of mechanical stimuli relevant to perfusion bioreactors, most notably, fluid shear stress, a feature not captured in the long-wavelength limit.