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Abstract

There is a paradigm shift in tissue engineering from in-vitro to in-vivo culture using injectable self-assembling gel based scaffolds. The permeability of nutrients and waste products through these materials is critical to their performance. In this paper, we report a methodology for selecting scaffold structures with different permeabilities and surface area/volume ratios that can be used to house a 3D cell aggregate. Such a system can be modelled if the consumption or production rates for metabolites and waste products respectively as well as the diffusion coefficients of these solutes in culture medium and the encapsulating gel matrix are known. A transient finite volume mass diffusion model, based on Fick's law, is derived where the consumption of cells is modelled through a source term. The results show that the `performance' of cell-doped gel is critically dependent on the rate at which cells consume key molecules e.g. glucose. Pragmatically, the model also provides insight as to how many cells a given gel geometry and structure can support.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	tissue scaffolds, glucose, gel, consumption rate, diffusion coefficient, biomaterials, finite volume, distributed computing, TherMOL 3D, Ficks law
Subjects:	Advanced Materials Advanced Materials > Biomaterials
Identification number/DOI:	10.1002/btpr.512
Last Modified:	02 Feb 2018 13:14
URI:	http://eprintspublications.npl.co.uk/id/eprint/4908

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