(677a) Analysis of Shear Stress Profiles in a Novel Vertical Wheel Bioreactor for Human Stem Cell-Based Therapy

Human stem cell-based therapies represent one of the great promises of regenerative medicine to treat diseases and disabilities without a known cure. The Vertical-Wheel bioreactor describes a novel approach to expand and specialize stem cells homogeneously. A central aspect is its ability to provide a homogeneous hydrodynamic environment, with a uniform distribution of fluid forces, and lower shear stress levels, while also providing completely expanded stem cells with an optimal growth performance, maintenance of the high quality, karyotype and pluripotency of the initial cells. In this project, a Vertical-Wheel bioreactor simulation was created using a stationary laminar flow model governed by the Navier Stokes equations in COMSOL Multiphysics. The simulation provided shear rate and velocity profiles that were used to assess the homogeneity of the hydrodynamic environment inside of the bioreactor, along with the shear stress levels in the wall of the vertical-wheel impeller. The results indicate that by changing the inlet velocity, working volume, and impeller diameter, the shear stress levels at the wall of the impeller and the fluid velocity inside of the bioreactor changed, describing a different hydrodynamic environment. Thus, it is possible to predict the conditions of the hydrodynamic environment provided by the bioreactor with the simulation constructed, while also illustrating the different tendencies of shear rate and velocity profiles on computational fluid dynamics.