(165d) Constructing Zonular Articular Cartilage Using a Varied Shear Bioreactor

Osteoarthritis is a critical disease affecting 33 million Americans, causing them to suffer from cartilage degradation. Current practices are unable to restore the native properties of the tissue. The success of growing articular cartilage (AC) in vitro relies heavily on developing bioreactors that mimics an environment present in native cartilage. However, current literature does not provide adequate strategies for developing zonally distinct AC. In this work, I aimed to produce functional tissue by developing a shear bioreactor containing a tapered wall to impart shear stress variations at the walls of cell-laden scaffolds. Human articular chondrocytes (Chs) were encapsulated in a porous alginate hydrogel and cultured in a shear bioreactor imparting a fluid flowrate of 5 mL/min. Culture duration occurred for 7 and 14 days to observe the temporal effects of the system. A static culture of Chs served as the control and a static culture of a cell-laden hydrogel served as the negative control. After the culture duration, samples were sectioned into 6 pieces to understand the location dependency of shear effects. Samples were tested for protein secretion, viability, and mRNA expression. It was hypothesized that there will be differences in protein production and gene expression in the different locations due to shear variation. Additionally, a longer culture duration would demonstrate these differences in samples.