Investigation of the In Vitro Culture Process for Skeletal-Tissue-Engineered Constructs Using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Experimental Methods

The in vitro culture process via bioreactors is critical to create tissue-engineered constructs (TECs) to repair or replace the damaged tissues/organs in various engineered applications. In the past, the TEC culture process was typically treated as a black box and performed on the basis of trial and error. Recently, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has demonstrated its potential to analyze the fluid flow inside and around the TECs, therefore, being able to provide insight into the culture process, such as information on the velocity field and shear stress distribution that can significantly affect such cellular activities as cell viability and proliferation during the culture process. This paper briefly reviews the CFD and experimental methods used to investigate the in vitro culture process of skeletal-type TECs in bioreactors, where mechanical deformation of the TEC can be ignored. Specifically, this paper presents CFD modeling approaches for the analysis of the velocity and shear stress fields, mass transfer, and cell growth during the culture process and also describes various particle image velocimetry (PIV) based experimental methods to measure the velocity and shear stress in the in vitro culture process. Some key issues and challenges are also identified and discussed along with recommendations for future research. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4007952]