Development of a Bioreactor by Computer Fluid Dynamics Simulations for the Maturation of 3D Printed Organs by Rapid Prototyping

Bioprinting of tissues and organs can be defined as layer-by-layer additive robotic biofabrication of three-dimensional functional living macrotissues and organ constructs using tissue spheroids as building blocks. The microtissues and tissue spheroids are living materials with certain measurable, evolving and potentially controllable composition, material and biological properties. Closely placed tissue spheroids undergo tissue fusion, a process that represents a fundamental biological and biophysical principle of developmental biology-inspired directed tissue self-assembly. After the tissue spheroids structuring, the tissue/organ newly made is then carried out into a bioreactor which should play an important role of providing an adequate environment to the growth and maturation of the bioproduct. Bioreactors are used to accelerate tissue maturation through the control of their mechanical, biochemical and electrical conditions. The creation of a representative environment inside the bioreactor is too complex since it can enclose a large range of variables. The simulation of this scenery is essential to the study and the success of tissues and organs bioprinting is straight linked to a set of an appropriate environment in the bioreactor that assure the feasibility, maturation, biomonitoring, tests, storing and transport of the involved elements on the generation of the new tissue such as the deposited cells and nutrients. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software packages have been a powerful tool to calculate flow fields, shear stresses and mass transport within and around 3D constructs, including a bioreactor environment. This work presents an initial study that reproduces the internal scenery of a bioreactor with some of the main variables through simulations based on the finite element method run on Ansys CFX package software.