| A novel perfusion bioreactor was designed to facilitate the control of medium flow through anatomically-shaped tissue engineered constructs in vitro. The constructs were patient-specific, temporal mandibular condyle grafts. The geometry was derived from a Computed Tomography (CT) scan of the patient. This geometry was utilized to CNC machine the constructs from bovine, trabecular bone. The constructs were seeded with human Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hMSCs) and perfused in a bioreactor for a period of five weeks. The perfusion bioreactor controlled flow throughout the construct by encasing it within an elastomeric mold and penetrating this mold with syringe needles. These needles were guided to specific regions and used as ports for medium flow. Four ports (one inlet, three outlets) were used to perfuse medium at 1.8 mL/min. Perfused constructs demonstrated dense tissue growth throughout their internal regions as opposed to constructs grown in static culture. Overall bone volume increased 11.1% in perfused constructs, and 8.7% in static constructs. A computational model of the flow of perfused medium through the porous construct was developed in FloWorks. The model was used to correlate computed flow patterns in the constructs with observed cellular morphology. |
