Sensor Integrated Bioreactors (SIBs)

We propose to develop sensor integrated bioreactors (SIBs) as a tool enabling researchers and producers of tissue constucts to monitor their development non-destructively during long-term culture (up to 28 days). The innovation is this proposal is the incorporation of advanced sensing, imaging and monitoring technologies into an existing state-of-the-art bioreactor system: Quasi-Vivo. The added functionality will allow for non-invasive, in situ monitoring of tissue constructs which will avoid the need to sacrifice experiments to collect data at each time point. The SIBs will be exploited by the end-user group established in this consortium, both to speed the development cycle of regenerative medicine products and improve the economics of production by providing a more closely controlled in-vitro model than is currently available.
This project will deliver cell culture systems that provide faster growth of tissue, more accurate control of phenotype and improved efficiency through the ability to monitor tissue development non-destructively in a flow-through system. The system will be validated in a particular application for bone regeneration using RegenTec's ' injectable bone' scaffold. However the Quasi-Vivo bioreactors incorporating the Sensor Integrated Bioreactors (SIBs) technology developed in this project will have a wider range of application than just bone regeneration. The initial size of the bioreactor will be ideal for research applications but it has already been demonstrated that up to 36 Quasi-Vivo bioreactors can be operated in parallel making them inherently scaleable for stem cell propagation for clinical use.

We propose to develop sensor integrated bioreactors (SIBs) as a tool enabling researchers and producers of tissue constucts to monitor their development non-destructively during long-term culture (up to 28 days). The innovation is this proposal is the incorporation of advanced sensing, imaging and monitoring technologies into an existing state-of-the-art bioreactor system: Quasi-Vivo. The added functionality will allow for non-invasive, in situ monitoring of tissue constructs which will avoid the need to sacrifice experiments to collect data at each time point. The SIBs will be exploited by the end-user group established in this consortium, both to speed the development cycle of regenerative medicine products and improve the economics of production by providing a more closely controlled in-vitro model than is currently available.
This project will deliver cell culture systems that provide faster growth of tissue, more accurate control of phenotype and improved efficiency through the ability to monitor tissue development non-destructively in a flow-through system. The system will be validated in a particular application for bone regeneration using RegenTec's ' injectable bone' scaffold. However the Quasi-Vivo bioreactors incorporating the Sensor Integrated Bioreactors (SIBs) technology developed in this project will have a wider range of application than just bone regeneration. The initial size of the bioreactor will be ideal for research applications but it has already been demonstrated that up to 36 Quasi-Vivo bioreactors can be operated in parallel making them inherently scaleable for stem cell propagation for clinical use.

This research proposal will have applications in both academia and industry (regenerative medicine, pharmaceutical and health products sectors). The proposed SIBs systems would be an invaluable tool for the better understanding long-term tissue/cell culture, particularly where applied to quality assessment. In the academic context, this study will specifically address the need for better technologies for the long term study of cell and tissue engineered constructs that recreate 3D architecture and cell-cell interdependency of the in vivo environment. As such beneficiaries could be envisaged in different fields including regenrative medicine, tissue engineering, disease modelling, analytical science, drug discovery and delivery. In the industrial context, this system could be an excellent model for analysing regenerative medicine products, assessing reproducibility between products, identifying novel therapeutic targets, assessing response to new drug leads as well as investigating toxicity of novel chemicals. Furthermore, the recent introduction of the 7th amendment to the EU Cosmetics Directive, which imposes a phased marketing ban on any products tested on animals, makes the development of such human based model extremely timely.