[in Japanese]

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An RWV(rotating wall vessel) bioreactor is known as a useful tool for three dimensional culture. Our group reported the rapid regeneration of three dimensional large cartilaginous tissue from rabbit and human bone marrow cells using the bioreactor. This system is quite useful, however, the present system needs manual operation of controlling rotation speed changing with the mass increase of the growing tissue. The medium exchange procedure is quite complex. Thus we developed a GMP grade automatic RWV culture system including functions of automatic rotation control and medium exchange, consisting an RWV bioreactor, two illumination systems, a CCD camera, and an automatic medium exchange unit. The detailed results using the automatic system will be reported.

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Three-dimensional culture techniques of MSCs have attracted much attention to the differentiation of MSCs into hyaline cartilage in vitro and to transplant it into an injured site; therefore, it is considered a promising technique for regenerative medicine for hyaline cartilage defects and osteoarthritis. However, the conventional three-dimensional culture system that is essential for chondrogenic induction has specific problems including the effects of gravitational stress on the cells and nutrition and excretion deficiencies. A rotating wall vessel (RWV) bioreactor, which was developed in a NASA space experiment, is an effective culture system that utilizes a circular vessel with a gas-exchange membrane and rotates vertically to provide culture medium flow and to balance gravity. In this paper, we introduce our recent results about cartilaginous tissue regeneration using RWV bioreactor from rabbit, monkey and human bone marrow cells.

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