Project Review

Many perfusion bioreactors that facilitate higher throughput are very expensive. Additional, more affordable bioreactors sacrifice productivity for cost savings. There are currently very few methods or models that can maintain high throughput low-flow experiments at a low cost. Therefore, such systems must be developed for research while considering the simplicity of assembly and operation.

Small-scale perfusion bioreactors are not suitable for research settings due to high cost and/or low throughput.

Our goal for this project is to design a perfusion bioreactor that is (1) portable, (2) low-cost, (3) high throughput, and (4) extracts media easily.

Portable: The bioreactor must be able to fit within a standard incubator and be easy to maneuver from a biosafety cabinet to an incubator with relative ease for the user.

Low-cost: The manufacturing cost of the bioreactor must be within the $500 limit. Additionally, we aim to reduce manual labor used for culturing cells - thereby reducing labor costs - and reduce costs on media usage, which is typically high for perfusion bioreactors.

High throughput: The design must have the ability to perform a simultaneous n = 3 trial per run at minimum. This allows the user to obtain statistically significant results for each run.

Easy extractions: To increase efficiency in performing metabolic studies, we aim to create a device where the user can easily extract media at any requested time point from any-or-all cell cultures.