Design of a custom-made device for real-time optical measurement of differential mineral concentrations in 3D scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

<p>Monitoring bone tissue engineered constructs during their maturation is important to ensure the quality of applied protocols. Several destructive, mainly histochemical, methods are conventionally used to this aim, requiring the sacrifice of the investigated samples. This implies i) to plan several scaffold replicates, ii) expensive and time consuming procedures and iii) to infer the maturity level of a given tissue construct from a cognate replica. To solve these issues, non-destructive techniques such as light spectroscopy-based methods have been reported to be useful. Here, a miniaturized and inexpensive custom-made spectrometer device is proposed to enable the non-destructive analysis of hydrogel scaffolds. Testing involved samples with a differential amount of calcium salt. When compared to a reference standard device, the custom-made spectrometer demonstrates the ability to perform measurements without requiring elaborate sample preparation and/or a complex instrumentation. This preliminary study shows the feasibility of light spectroscopy-based methods as useful for the non-destructive analysis of tissue engineered constructs. Based on these results the custom-made spectrometer device appears as a useful option to perform real-time/in-line analysis. Finally, the device can be considered as a component that can be easily integrated on board of recently prototyped bioreactor systems, for the monitoring of the tissue engineered constructs during their conditioning.</p>