Scaffold Pore Geometry Guides Gene Regulation and Bone-like Tissue Formation in Dynamic Cultures.

Cells sense and respond to scaffold pore geometry and mechanical stimuli. Many fabrication methods used in bone tissue engineering render structures with poorly controlled pore geometries. Given that cell-scaffold interactions are complex, drawing a conclusion on how cells sense and respond to uncontrolled scaffold features under mechanical loading is difficult.

Flow velocity-driven differentiation of human mesenchymal stromal cells in silk fibroin scaffolds: A combined experimental and computational approach.

Mechanical loading plays a major role in bone remodeling and fracture healing. Mimicking the concept of mechanical loading of bone has been widely studied in bone tissue engineering by perfusion cultures. Nevertheless, there is still debate regarding the in-vitro mechanical stimulation regime.

Micro-computed tomography based computational fluid dynamics for the determination of shear stresses in scaffolds within a perfusion bioreactor.

Perfusion bioreactors are known to exert shear stresses on cultured cells, leading to cell differentiation and enhanced extracellular matrix deposition on scaffolds. The influence of the scaffold's porous microstructure is investigated for a polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffold with a regular microarchitecture and a silk fibroin (SF) scaffold with an irregular network of interconnected pores. Their complex 3D geometries are imaged by micro-computed tomography and used in direct pore-level simulations of the entire scaffold-bioreactor system to numerically solve the governing mass and momentum conservation equations for fluid flow through porous media.

The evolution of simulation techniques for dynamic bone tissue engineering in bioreactors.

Bone tissue engineering aims to overcome the drawbacks of current bone regeneration techniques in orthopaedics. Bioreactors are widely used in the field of bone tissue engineering, as they help support efficient nutrition of cultured cells with the possible combination of applying mechanical stimuli. Beneficial influencing parameters of in vitro cultures are difficult to find and are mostly determined by trial and error, which is associated with significant time and money spent.