Bioreactors for connective tissue engineering: design and monitoring innovations

The challenges for the tissue engineering of connective tissue lie in creating off-the-shelf tissue constructs which are capable of providing organs for transplantation. These strategies aim to grow a complex tissue with the appropriate mechanical integrity necessary for functional load bearing. Monolayer culture systems lack correlation with the in vivo environment and the naturally occur ring cell phenotypes. Part of the development of more recent models is to create growth environments or bioreactors which enable three-dimensional culture. Evidence suggests that in order to grow functional load-bearing tissues in a bioreactor, the cells must experience mechanical loading stimuli similar to that experienced in vivo which sets out the requirements for mechanical loading bioreactors. An essential part of developing new bioreactors for tissue growth is identifying ways of routinely and continuously measuring neo-tissue formation and in order to fully identify the successful generation of a tissue implant, the appropriate on-line monitoring must be developed. New technologies are being developed to advance our efforts to grow tissue ex vivo. The bioreactor is a critical part of these developments in supporting growth of biological implants and combining this with new advances in the detection of tissue formation allows us to refine our protocols and move nearer to off-the-shelf implants for clinical applications.