Analyzing Drug Delivery and Osteoblast Growth on a Porous Scaffold in a Perfusion Bioreactor

A. Sun, and S. Murray
Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
发布日期 2011

Implantable Collagen sponges are used in Spinal Surgery as Drug Delivery Scaffolds. An optimal concentration of growth factor that strikes a balance between bone growth and adverse diffusion effects is difficult to find. The porous sponge also serves as a scaffold for Osteoblast growth, and fluid shear has been shown to mediate biological effects on that cell type.

We use COMSOL Multiphysics to model an in-vitro perfusion bioreactor system that contains a porous scaffold in the reaction chamber. The reaction engineering interface is used to model release of scaffold-bound growth factor, while its subsequent convection and diffusion are modeled as species transport in porous media. The Brinkman Equations are used to simulate fluid flow through the Porous phase.