Numerical Simulation by CFD of the Growth of Osteocytes within a Bioreactor

Abstract

For years bone grafts have been used to regenerate or replace damaged bones, treat fractures or bone diseases, which requires surgical intervention and all the risks and problems that this entails, such as: immune response, transmission of diseases etc. As a consequence of the limitations of this technique was born the engineering of bone tissues. The objective of this new type of tissue engineering is to carry out the cellular regeneration of the damaged bone tissue until completely re-establishing its functionality. This requires the creation of artificial porous structures (scaffolding or three-dimensional matrices) biocompatible in which bone cells (osteocytes) extracted from the patient's own tissue are cultured. Achieving adequate oxygen supply, a high cell density and a uniform distribution of cells over three-dimensional scaffolds has become a challenge in recent years. For this reason, a numerical model of osteocyte growth has been implemented in ANSYS Fluent. The model includes the oxygen and nutrient consumption of biomass, the effect of shear stress on cell proliferation and the specific growth rate of osteocytes. This model was evaluated in realistic threedimensional scaffolds inside a perfusion bioreactor and it has been proved that the cell proliferation is conditioned by the wall shear stress.