Tissue engineering is one of the cutting edge disciplines in biomedicine. Basically, it aims the development of tissues and organs by means of the application of in-vitro cell culture techniques in order to grow tissues, or even full organs, which can be used to replace those of the human body which are ill or have lost its functionality. Thus, tissue engineering promises a new paradigm in the treatment of many diseases as well as to revolution the current organ transplantation scheme since, when totally developed, full new organs will be grown in-vitro to replace those damaged removing the need from donors, which is maybe the bottleneck for the application of these techniques nowadays.
In the last decades, a lot of effort has been put in the investigation of the tissue engineering techniques, which pose a variety of challenges when compared to the traditional cell culture techniques. Perhaps the most relevant difference is related to the particular geometry of the substrates in which cells are grown aiming to develop an engineered tissue or organ. Usually, three dimensional scaffolds are used in tissue engineering, which makes a big difference compared with the usual bi-dimensional surface used in standard cell culture. The incorporation of three-dimensional scaffolds increases the complexity of the culture and difficults the oxygen and nutrients supply to the cells, causing cellular death when not performed properly.
Moreover the scaffold geometry, tissue engineering cultures are also strongly conditioned by the need of providing the cells with a growth environment which mimics the conditions which cell experience in-vivo as close as possible. This point is crucial for the cells to behave in a similarly to the in-vivo conditions and is of vital importance for the obtaining of "good quality" tissue. Tissue engineering bioreactors are designed to generate those culture conditions which, moreover the standard gas and temperature standard values, incorporate flow or mechanical stimulation conditions present in in-vivo systems.
EBERS develops tissue engineering bioreactors for research capable of simulating flow and direct substrate deformation conditions on different types of substrates and culture chambers suitable for porous and cylindrical scaffolds, membranes and sheet-like scaffolds. Also culture chambers, circuits and racks are available among our products in order to facilitate the labour of researchers. Moreover, we offer a technical service for the development and manufacturing of bespoke systems adapting to the particular requirements of your particular experimental set-up in order to satisfy the demands of our most demandings customers.
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