Large Scale Expansion of Human Umbilical Cord Cells in a Rotating Bed System Bioreactor for Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering Applications

Widespread use of human umbilical cord cells for cardiovascular tissue engineering requires production of large numbers of well-characterized cells under controlled conditions. In current research projects, the expansion of cells to be used to create a tissue construct is usually performed in static cell culture systems which are, however, often not satisfactory due to limitations in nutrient and oxygen supply. To overcome these limitations dynamic cell expansion in bioreactor systems under controllable conditions could be an important tool providing continuous perfusion for the generation of large numbers of viable pre-conditioned cells in a short time period. For this purpose cells derived from human umbilical cord arteries were expanded in a rotating bed system bioreactor for up to 9 days. For a comparative study, cells were cultivated under static conditions in standard culture devices. Our results demonstrated that the microenvironment in the perfusion bioreactor was more favorable than that of the standard cell culture flasks. Data suggested that cells in the bioreactor expanded 39 fold (38.7 ± 6.1 fold) in comparison to statically cultured cells (31.8 ± 3.0 fold). Large-scale production of cells in the bioreactor resulted in more than 3 x 108 cells from a single umbilical cord fragment within 9 days. Furthermore cell doubling time was lower in the bioreactor system and production of extracellular matrix components was higher. With this study, we present an appropriate method to expand human umbilical cord artery derived cells with high cellular proliferation rates in a well-defined bioreactor system under GMP conditions.