A bioreactor that grows human cells could change drug development

Novel platform supports biomedical research without animal testing

This platform could support biomedical research without animal testing. Using 3D-printing techniques and alternative materials such as permeable membranes, Lab scientists created a microenvironment that mimics key features in human physiology to enable cells’ growth. Credit to: Brian Jun, Jacob Torrez, David Ross et al., Scientific Reports, CC BY NC-ND 4.0

A bioreactor from Los Alamos National Laboratory simulates the complex environment in which human cells grow, presenting an emerging new method to investigate interactions among multiple cell types. Read the paper Why this matters: For biomedical research, systems such as this could facilitate therapeutics development without the need for animal testing and without the drawbacks of polymer-molded microfluidic devices. How they did it: To create a microenvironment that mimics key features in human physiology to enable the cells’ growth, the team combined 3D-printing techniques and alternative materials such as permeable membranes. \cdot The system uses a 3D-printed perfusion bioreactor to facilitate the growth and differentiation of human bone marrow cells while enabling co-culture with vascular cells. \cdot The team studied samples under a microscope for biomarker analysis. What’s next: Los Alamos scientists plan to explore biomedical cell behavior and disorders more thoroughly using the new techniques in this study. Future development will incorporate a way to facilitate the simultaneous culture and differentiation of all cell types, along with molecular-scale analysis. Funding: Laboratory Directed Research and Development program of Los Alamos National Laboratory LA-UR-25-28707

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