Design of a Bioreactor for Mechanical Stimulation of Adipose Derived Stem Cells for Intervertebral Disc Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Lower back pain is one of the most common medical problems in the world [1], affecting between 70% and 85% of the US population at some point during their lives [2]. Disc degeneration is caused by biological changes in the disc, which result in dehydration of the nucleus pulposus (NP). The long term goal of this project is to treat disc degeneration with a tissue engineering strategy for the regeneration of the nucleus pulposus using messechymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue. It has been established in cartilage regeneration studies that cyclic compressive loading of stem cells is beneficial for tissue formation compared to static culture [3–7]. In this work, a bioreactor is being developed that can subject cell-seeded polymeric tissue engineering scaffolds to dynamic compressive forces. Ultimately, the bioreactor will be used to study the effects of different loading parameters on the production of new nucleus pulposus tissue from adipose-derived stem cells.