The development of 3D connective tissues in vitro is
heavily dependent upon remodelling of the matrix, in
particular collagen, by resident cells. We have developed
a novel plastic compression (PC) technique, for the
fabrication of dense cell-collagen based bio-mimetic
tissues (Brown et al. 2005).
Cell survival in these PC collagen constructs is critical for
successful tissue modelling and so the aim here is to
understand, quantitatively their dynamic perfusion. This is
important for the development of tissue bioreactors for the
culture of PC constructs. We have used a fibre-optic
oxygen sensor to measure changing oxygen levels in the
core of such constructs. This effectively measures O2
consumption by cells, and by extrapolation, gradients and
diffusion properties in the model tissues, which can be
correlated with cell death
