Dynamic seeding of tissue-engineered vascular grafts in a novel perfusion bioreactor system

As tissue-engineered small caliber vascular grafts become a viable solution for coronary bypass surgery, scale-up bioprocessing issues will become important. This study implements the use of a novel perfusion bioreactor system for the development of tissue-engineered blood vessel substitutes. Preliminary results indicate uniform seeding, matrix deposition and 5-fold increase in cell number within 4 days. One week seeding of 3 scaffolds in a 3-module bioreactor unit resulted in uniform cell distribution and constructs with similar cell proliferation rates. This bioreactor system looks therefore promising for the dynamic seeding of multiple constructs in the same biochemical and mechanical environment.