Chapter 7 Biomimetic Approaches to Design of Tissue Engineering Bioreactors

摘要

Tissue engineering is an attractive strategy to address the increasing clinical need for tissue replacement. Engineered tissues can also serve as high-fidelity models for studies of development, disease and therapeutic modalities. Cultivation of three-dimensional tissue equivalents is necessarily based on the use of bioreactors, which are designed to provide controlled steady state cultivation conditions as well as required biochemical and physical regulatory signals. In this chapter, we review the design and operation of tissue engineering bioreactors, with the focus on biomimetic approaches to provide in vivo-like environments for rapid and orderly tissue development by cells cultured on a scaffold. Specifically, we focus on bioreactors for tissue engineering of two distinctly different tissues -articular cartilage and myocardium.