Bioreactors for Bone Tissue Engineering: A perspective in Modulation of
Mechano-sensitivity in Bone
Abstract
There have been significant developments in the area of bone tissue
engineering since its advent in terms of biomaterials as well as
techniques of scaffold fabrication. Despite all these developments, the
translation of research to clinical applications is very limited. The
most challenging obstacle in the road of translation of engineered
tissue construct into clinical applications is the manufacturing of the
designed substitutes in a scalable manner. This bottleneck could be
overcome by using bioreactors for the manufacture of tissue constructs.
In this review, a current scenario of bone defects and cause of
translational gap between laboratory research and clinical use has been
briefly discussed. Furthermore, various types of bioreactors being used
in the area of bone tissue regeneration in recent studies have been
highlighted along with their advantages and limitations. After
literature survey, we found that bioreactors should have the following
attribute: (i) A dynamic combined bioreactor providing more than one
physico-mechanical cues; (ii) Support the growth of multiple tissue
engineered constructs simultaneously along with homogeneous distribution
of cells throughout the scaffolds; (iii) Versatile to support different
types of scaffolds and cell types to produce a patient/defect specific
tissue construct as well as to fulfill the adequate supply demand for
clinical applications; (iv) Automated with easy to operate protocols for
minimal manual handling; (v) Effectively handled and reproducible; and
(vi) Commercialization aspects, quality control and safely requirements.
Furthermore, computational approaches could be combined with bone tissue
engineering experiments using bioreactors to simulate and optimize the
cellular growth in bone tissue constructs.