Convection and hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier enhanced oxygen transport in a hepatic hollow fiber bioreactor

Influence of shear force on ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic model cells in a stirred tank bioreactor

To evaluate shear stress influence on ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic cell lineages for clinical application, in this study, human pro-monocytic cell (namely U937 cell line) was selected as a hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) model and cultured in suspension mode at two different agitation rates (50, 100 rpm) in the stirred bioreactor. At the agitation rate of 50 rpm, the cells achieved higher expansion folds (27.4 fold) with minimal morphological changes as well as apoptotic cell death, while at 100 rpm the expansion fold decreased after 5-day of culture in suspension culture in comparison with static culture and reached 24.5 fold at the end of the culture. The results of glucose consumption and lactate production were also in agreement with the data of fold expansion and indicated the preference of culture in the stirred bioreactor when agitated at 50 rpm. This study indicated the stirred bioreactor system with an agitation rate of 50 rpm and surface aeration may be used as a potential dynamic culture system for clinical applications of hematopoietic cell lineage. The current experiments shed data related to the effect of shear stress on human U937 cells, as a hematopoietic cell model, to set a protocol for expansion of HSCs for biomedical applications.

Alginate-chitosan core-shell microcapsule cultures of hepatic cells in a small scale stirred bioreactor: impact of shear forces and microcapsule core composition

A small scale stirred bioreactor was designed and the effect of different agitation rates (30, 60 and 100 rpm) was investigated on HepG2 cells cultured in alginate-chitosan (AC) core-shell microcapsule in terms of the cell proliferation and liver-specific function. The microencapsulated hepatic cells could proliferate well when they were cultured for 10 days at 30 rpm while the cell-laden microcapsules showed no cell proliferation at 100 rpm in the bioreactor system. Albumin production rate, as an important liver function, increased also 1.8- and 1.5- fold under stirring rate of 30 rpm compared to the static culture and 60 rpm of agitation, respectively. Moreover, In comparison with the static culture, about 1.5-fold increment in urea production was observed at 30 rpm. Similarly, the highest expressions of albumin and P450 genes were found at 30 rpm stirring rate, which were 4.9- and 19.2-fold of the static culture. Addition of collagen to the microcapsule core composition (ACol/C) could improve the cell proliferation and functionality at 60 rpm in comparison with the cell-laden microcapsules without collagen. The study demonstrated the hepatic cell-laden ACol/C microcapsule hydrogel cultured in the small scale stirred bioreactor at low mixing rate has a great potential for mass production of the hepatic cells while maintaining liver-specific functions.

Liver tissue engineering and cell sources: issues and challenges

Liver diseases are of major concern as they now account for millions of deaths annually. As a result of the increased incidence of liver disease, many patients die on the transplant waiting list, before a donor organ becomes available. To meet the huge demand for donor liver, alternative approaches using liver tissue engineering principles are being actively pursued. Even though adult hepatocytes, the primary cells of the liver are most preferred for tissue engineering of liver, their limited availability, isolation from diseased organs, lack of in vitro propagation and deterioration of function acts as a major drawback to their use. Various approaches have been taken to prevent the functional deterioration of hepatocytes including the provision of an adequate extracellular matrix and co-culture with non-parenchymal cells of liver. Great progress has also been made to differentiate human stem cells to hepatocytes and to use them for liver tissue engineering applications. This review provides an overview of recent challenges, issues and cell sources with regard to liver tissue engineering.

Use of perfluorocarbons to enhance the performance of perfused three-dimensional hepatic cultures

Bioartificial liver devices (BALs) are extracorporeal systems designed to temporarily bridge patients until a suitable donated liver is available for transplantation and also have value for pharmaceutical testing applications. Yet critical issues exist that limit the functional performance of their current designs. One of these concerns scale up issues connected to oxygen (O2 ) delivery to the cells housed within their three-dimensional (3D) configurations, and its consequences to device performance. As primary blood substitute candidates with extraordinarily high O2 capacity, perfluorocarbons (PFCs) offer hope as one strategy for addressing the O2 delivery issue encountered when scaling up the tissue space of current BAL designs. This study utilizes a PFC-based second-generation O2 carrier OXYCYTE®, as an additive to regular nutrient medium, for augmenting O2 delivery in a customized 3D tissue assembly system. The results demonstrate that the addition of PFCs significantly increases the O2 capacity of regular medium and that net cytochrome P450 activity levels are considerably increased under flow in PFC-treated systems, as compared to controls. This work thus clarifies the benefits of using PFCs to enhance the functional performance of 3D liver systems.

Use of liposome encapsulated hemoglobin as an oxygen carrier for fetal and adult rat liver cell culture

Engineering liver tissue constructs with sufficient cell mass for transplantation implies culturing large numbers of hepatocytes in a reduced volume; however, providing sufficient oxygen to dense cell cultures is still not feasible using only conventional culture medium. Liposome-encapsulated hemoglobin (LEH), an oxygen-carrying blood substitute originally designed for short-term perfusion, may be a good candidate as an oxygen carrier to cultured liver cells. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of maintaining long term hepatocyte cultures using LEH. Primary fetal and adult rat liver cells were directly exposed to LEH for 6 to 14 days in static culture or in a perfused flat plate bioreactor. The functions and viability of adult rat hepatocytes exposed to LEH were not adversely affected in static monolayer culture and were even improved in the bioreactor. However, some cytotoxicity of LEH was observed with fetal rat liver cells after 4 days of culture. LEH, though a suitable oxygen carrier for long-term culture of mature hepatocytes, is not suitable in its present form for perfusing fetal hepatocyte cultures in direct contact with the liposomes; either the LEH will have to be made less toxic or a more sophisticated bioreactor that prevents the direct contact between hepatocytes and perfusates will have to be designed if fetal cells are to be used for liver tissue engineering.

A strategy to determine operating parameters in tissue engineering hollow fiber bioreactors

The development of tissue engineering hollow fiber bioreactors (HFB) requires the optimal design of the geometry and operation parameters of the system. This article provides a strategy for specifying operating conditions for the system based on mathematical models of oxygen delivery to the cell population. Analytical and numerical solutions of these models are developed based on Michaelis–Menten kinetics. Depending on the minimum oxygen concentration required to culture a functional cell population, together with the oxygen uptake kinetics, the strategy dictates the model needed to describe mass transport so that the operating conditions can be defined. If c_min ≫ K_m we capture oxygen uptake using zero-order kinetics and proceed analytically. This enables operating equations to be developed that allow the user to choose the medium flow rate, lumen length, and ECS depth to provide a prescribed value of c_min. When , we use numerical techniques to solve full Michaelis–Menten kinetics and present operating data for the bioreactor. The strategy presented utilizes both analytical and numerical approaches and can be applied to any cell type with known oxygen transport properties and uptake kinetics.

Three-dimensional culture and bioreactors for cellular therapies

A bioreactor is defined as a specifically designed vessel to facilitate the growth of organisms and cells through application of physical and/or electrical stimulus. When cells with therapeutic potential were first discovered, they were initially cultured and expanded in two-dimensional (2-D) culture vessels such as plates or T-flasks. However, it was soon discovered that bioreactors could be used to expand and maintain cultures more easily and efficiently. Since then, bioreactors have come to be accepted as an indispensable tool to advance cell and tissue culture further. A wide array of bioreactors has been developed to date, and in recent years businesses have started supplying bioreactors commercially. Bioreactors in the research arena range from stirred tank bioreactors for suspension culture to those with various mechanical actuators that can apply different fluidic and mechanical stresses to tissues and three-dimensional (3-D) scaffolds. As regenerative medicine gains more traction in the clinic, bioreactors for use with cellular therapies are being developed and marketed. While many of the simpler bioreactors are fit for purpose, others fail to satisfy the complex requirements of tissues in culture. We have examined the use of different types of bioreactors in regenerative medicine and evaluated the application of bioreactors in the realization of emerging cellular therapies.

Hemoglobin regulates the metabolic, synthetic, detoxification, and biotransformation functions of hepatoma cells cultured in a hollow fiber bioreactor

Hepatic hollow fiber (HF) bioreactors constitute one type of extracorporeal bioartificial liver assist device (BLAD). Ideally, cultured hepatocytes in a BLAD should closely mimic the in vivo oxygenation environment of the liver sinusoid to yield a device with optimal performance. However, most BLADs, including hepatic HF bioreactors, suffer from O2 limited transport toward cultured hepatocytes, which reduces their performance. We hypothesize that supplementation of hemoglobin-based O2 carriers into the circulating cell culture medium of hepatic HF bioreactors is a feasible and effective strategy to improve bioreactor oxygenation and performance. We examined the effect of bovine hemoglobin (BvHb) supplementation (15g/L) in the circulating cell culture medium of hepatic HF bioreactors on hepatocyte proliferation, metabolism, and varied liver functions, including biosynthesis, detoxification, and biotransformation. It was observed that BvHb supplementation supported the maintenance of a higher cell mass in the extracapillary space, improved hepatocyte metabolic efficiency (i.e., hepatocytes consumed much less glucose), improved hepatocyte capacity for drug metabolism, and conserved both albumin synthesis and ammonia detoxification functions compared to controls (no BvHb supplementation) under the same experimental conditions.

Bioartificial liver devices: Perspectives on the state of the art

Acute liver failure remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Bioartificial liver (BAL) devices have been in development for more than 20 years. Such devices aim to temporarily take over the metabolic and excretory functions of the liver until the patients' own liver has recovered or a donor liver becomes available for transplant. The important issues include the choice of cell materials and the design of the bioreactor. Ideal BAL cell materials should be of good viability and functionality, easy to access, and exclude immunoreactive and tumorigenic cell materials. Unfortunately, the current cells in use in BAL do not meet these requirements. One of the challenges in BAL development is the improvement of current materials; another key point concerning cell materials is the coculture of different cells. The bioreactor is an important component of BAL, because it determines the viability and function of the hepatocytes within it. From the perspective of bioengineering, a successful and clinically effective bioreactor should mimic the structure of the liver and provide an in vivo-like microenvironment for the growth of hepatocytes, thereby maintaining the cells' viability and function to the maximum extent. One future trend in the development of the bioreactor is to improve the oxygen supply system. Another direction for future research on bioreactors is the application of biomedical materials. In conclusion, BAL is, in principle, an important therapeutic strategy for patients with acute liver failure, and may also be a bridge to liver transplantation. It requires further research and development, however, before it can enter clinical practice.

Imaging glucose metabolism in perfluorocarbon-perfused hepatocyte bioreactors using positron emission tomography

In vitro hepatocyte bioreactor functionality depends particularly on maintaining appropriate oxygen levels and exposure to nonparenchymal cells. An attractive solution without immunological consequences to the patient is incorporating a perfluorocarbon oxygen carrier in the circulating medium and co-culturing hepatocytes with stellate cells. Since bioreactors are normally sealed sterile units, demonstrating metabolic functionality is hindered by limited access to the cells after their aggregation in the matrix. A novel possibility is to use positron emission tomography (PET) to image cellular radioactive glucose uptake under O(2)-limited conditions. In this study, primary cell isolation procedures were carried out on eight pigs. Pairs of cell-seeded and cell-free (control) bioreactors with and without perfluorocarbon were cultured under identical conditions and were oxygenated using hypoxic (5% O(2)) and ambient (20% O(2)) gas mixes. Sixteen PET scans were conducted 24 h after cell isolation, the same timescale as that involved in treating a liver failure patient with a primary-cell bioreactor. In all cases, cell-seeded bioreactors without perfluorocarbon were more radioactive, i.e., were more glycolytic, than those with perfluorocarbon. This difference was significant in the hypoxic pair of bioreactors but not in the ambient pair of bioreactors. Additionally, in the same hypoxic bioreactors, circulating extracellular steady-state glucose levels were significantly lower and lactate levels were higher than those in the ambient bioreactors. Similar findings have been made in other in vitro hepatocyte studies investigating the effects of perfluorocarbons. PET is attractive for studying in situ O(2)-dependent bioreactor metabolism because of its visual and numerically quantifiable outputs. Longer-term metabolic studies (e.g., 5-10 days) investigating the effect of perfluorocarbon on bioreactor longevity will complement these findings in the future.

Preclinical characterization of primary porcine hepatocytes in a clinically relevant flat membrane bioreactor

Using primary porcine hepatocytes, artificial extracorporeal liver support (AEL) is a therapy that carries out the liver functions of liver failure patients until their own organs have been regenerated or until whole organ transplantation. Significant variation exists with regard to current bioreactor designs for AEL, and they may not reflect the in vivo architecture of the liver since each individual hepatocyte has its own direct contact with blood plasma for oxygen and nutrient supply and detoxification. The present study, based on our flat membrane bioreactor (FMB), aimed at in vivo liver architecture and to meet authentic clinical levels of human plasma exposure. Since many existing preclinical AELs are based on commercial culture medium with or without nonhuman serum, they may not authentically reflect the clinical situation in human patients, and little research has been done on human plasma exposure in in vitro culture-based bioreactors. To address this situation, herein we examined liver-specific functions such as albumin secretion, urea synthesis, glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT), glutamic pyruvic transaminase (GPT), cell membrane stability by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) test and ammonia clearance by using human plasma and serum-free medium in long-term culture of primary porcine hepatocytes to show the potential of our clinically relevant FMB. We observed that the organotypical double-gel (DG) culture is superior to conventional collagen-coated single-gel (SG) cultures. The performance of liver-specific functions by the FMB has long-term stability with intact cell morphology for up to 20 days under both plasma exposure and serum-free media. Our three focus points (long-term culture that correlates with the generation time of spontaneous regeneration, high-density culture, organotypical culture model using human plasma) may provide valuable clinical clues for AEL.

In vitro evaluation of a multi-layer radial-flow bioreactor based on galactosylated chitosan nanofiber scaffolds

Clinical use of bioartificial livers (BAL) strongly relies on the development of bioreactors. In this study, we developed a multi-layer radial-flow bioreactor based on galactosylated chitosan nanofiber scaffolds and evaluated its efficacy in vitro. The bioreactor contains 65 layers of stacked flat plates, on which the nanofiber scaffolds were electrospinned for hepatocyte immobilization and aggregation. Culture medium containing pig red blood cells (RBCs) was perfused from the center to periphery, so that exchange materials are sufficient to afford enough oxygen. We determined the parameters for hepatocyte-specific function and general metabolism and also measured the oxygen consumption rate (OCR). Microscope and scanned electron microscopy observation showed a tight adhesion between cells and scaffolds. Compared with the control (bioreactors without nanofiber scaffolds), the number of adhered cells in our bioreactor was 1.59-fold; the protein-synthesis capacity of hepatocytes was 1.73-fold and urea was 2.86-fold. Moreover, the OCR of bioreactors with RBCs was about 1.91-fold that of bioreactors without RBCs. The galactosylated chitosan nanofiber scaffolds introduced into our new bioreactor greatly enhanced cell adhesion and function, and the RBCs added into the culture medium were able to afford enough oxygen for hepatocytes. Importantly, our new bioreactor showed an exciting efficiency, and it may afford the short-term support of patients with hepatic failure.