NDSU Research Foundation

The horizontal flow bioreactor is invented to facilitate continuous flow conditions to the cells grown on a tissue-engineered scaffold to mimic the interstitial fluid flow conditions around cells inside the body. The continuous fluid flow helps improve the mass transfer rates of cells and provides physical stimulus to the cells. Unlike the available perfusion-based vertical bioreactors where flow is vertical through scaffolds, here the flow is horizontal through and over the scaffolds. This enables studies on the attachment of cells to substrates, tissues, and specifically bone mimetic scaffolds. The attachment of circulating tumor cells to substrates and tissues can be studied using this device. This bioreactor can be used to study cell proliferation, cell migration, and cell clustering under flow conditions. The device can also be used to study the biology of cell growth, and cell response under flow conditions mimicking in vivo conditions. This device can also be used to study cell filtration techniques for capturing circulating tumor cells that are known to be very significant for causing metastasis of cancer. This bioreactor can be used for testing drugs and drug delivery systems. Cancer progression goes through two important phases; the first is EMT or epithelial to mesenchymal transition of cancer cells followed by MET the mesenchymal to epithelial transition that occurs at metastasis. The horizontal bioreactor can mimic both stages and also the transition from one to the other.