Simulating tissue growth factors for custom tissue engineering
Simulating tissue growth factors for custom tissue engineering lead image
Tissue engineering has the potential to revolutionize medicine. The field sits at the intersection of physics, biology, and computing, and the customizable tissue it promises can be used for organ transplants, disease modeling, and drug testing.
Like baking the perfect cake, the ingredients and processes play an important and interconnected role in the resulting characteristics of engineered tissue. Fattahpour and Sanaei developed a model that considers these complex interactions between the various factors involved in tissue growth.
“Understanding how various factors, including nutrient flow, scaffold elasticity, and cell properties, interact and influence tissue growth is paramount,” said author Haniyeh Fattahpour. “Our work aims to provide a comprehensive mathematical model that considers the collective impact of these factors, allowing for a more accurate representation of the complex tissue engineering process and the development of optimal tissue growth strategies.”
Cells’ unique properties determine how they proliferate, migrate, and interact with the scaffold. However, scaffold properties and nutrient supply can be used to manipulate cell growth for the desired characteristics.
The simulations revealed that scaffold elastic compliance and the rate at which cells consume nutrients significantly impact growth, but the hunger rate can cause a longer incubation time.
“Adjusting scaffold elastic compliance, while maintaining constant nutrient consumption, results in an optimal funnel-shaped channel geometry, which enhances tissue integration and functionality,” said Fattahpour. “These takeaways emphasize the importance of considering multiple factors simultaneously in tissue engineering and highlight the potential for optimizing scaffold designs to achieve superior tissue growth outcomes.”
After including additional factors, the authors plan to validate their model with the experimental results provided by their collaborators.
Source: “Effects of nutrient concentration and scaffold elasticity on the tissue growth in a tissue engineering scaffold channel,” by Haniyeh Fattahpour and Pejman Sanaei, Physics of Fluids (2023). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0170334 .
