Development of a high-throughput bioreactor system for biomedical applications

Cell culture optimization of in-vitro cell culture for tissue engineering, pharmacological or metabolic studies require a large number of experiments to be conducted under varying conditions. In this paper we describe a high-throughput bioreactor system that allows conducting parallel experiments in a simulated in vivo-like environment. Our bioreactors consist in a mixing device controlled by an embedded system that regulates the insertion of gas in the culture medium in order to control its pH. Each culture system possesses of an autonomous control system able to ensure an optimal environment for cells. A computer communicates with the embedded system to acquire data and setup experiment variables. With this apparatus we can perform a high- throughput experiment controlling with several bioreactors working in parallel. In this paper we discuss the architecture of the system, and some experimental results are presented.