Design and Fabrication of a Radial Flow Bioreactor to Decellularize Muscular Arteries

Abstract

Tissue engineering seeks to obtain functional organs in laboratories due to the scarcity and difficulty of obtaining organs and tissues for donations. We must consider that there are patients who require organs and/or tissues for which there is currently no transplant protocol for them, for example, blood vessels. Currently, a scaffold biofabrication technique used in tissue engineering known as decellularization is used, with which we obtain a natural cellular scaffold in which we can seed cells to obtain a functional blood vessel. The aim of this work is to make the biochemical process of decellularization more efficient using a bioreactor that generates mechanical and hydraulic stimulations. A radial flow hydraulic circuit was designed and simulated in Solidworks by solving the NavierStokes equations to have a non-turbulent laminar behavior and to stimulate cell detachment without damaging the collagen matrix of the blood vessel. Finally, the bioreactor was printed using additive printing techniques using a photosensitive resin as shown in this work