All-in-one rapid-prototyped bioreactor/implant for semi-automated generation of tailor-made critical size bone tissue substitutes

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers the possibility to design and build products with high geometrical omplexity and in smaller batch numbers. In this work we applied AM to design and build a disposable bioreactor in combination with a scaffold. This work applies rapid prototyping to design and fabricate scaffolds pre-enclosed into a disposable and ready-to-use perfusion chamber. Computerized tomography was used to scan a 3 cm sheep tibia section and generate a porous computer model replica. A fully enclosed perfusion chamber was designed around the replica. As a proof of principle the perfusion chamber and porous implant within were prototyped in one single piece by fused deposition modeling of ABS. The device’s watertightness was confirmed by micro-CT and high flow perfusion studies. Micro-CT also confirmed that although prototyped in one piece, one inside the other, the implant and surrounding chamber were not merged together at any point. Opening the chamber we observed that perfused fluids had totally and homogenously reached the highly interconnected porous network of the scaffold. This device is currently being fabricated from PLA for performing in vitro perfusion cell cultures in its interior. This work demonstrated the possibility to produce easy- and ready-to-use fluid-efficient culture chambers pre-enclosing tailor-made and patient-specific scaffolds.