Novel self-contained Bioreactor for the study of both muscle and cartilage growth and repair

This challenging and engaging project is to develop and test a novel and complete stand-alone bioreactor system to study the variables that affect both the growth and quality of both muscle and cartilage tissues. This will be done under different stress mechanisms including compressive forces, tensile forces, electro-stimulation and growth medium make-up. It will be able to utilize state-of-the-art bio-printed scaffolds as necessary for this study and will be designed to be capable of developing cartilage with a bone attach layer, a transition layer (the osteochondral interface) and the cartilage cushion layer.
Incorporated into the design is the capability to study muscle growth and repair relative to tensile forces and electro-stimulation from both animal cadavers as well as study the formation and growth from primary cells relative to these two stress variables.