Bioreactors and microbioreactors for electromechanical stimulation in cardiac tissue engineering

This PhD thesis work was focused onto the development of advanced culture systems for laboratory studies of cardiac tissue engineering, featuring controlled electrical, or combined electro-mechanical stimulation of the culture environment. In consideration of the different research interests involved at the diverse hierarchical levels,the work was developed along two parallel lines acting at two different length scales,namely i) the development of macroscopic bioreactor devices suitable to carry out stimulated cell cultures with traditional cell-lab tools and procedures; ii) the development of engineering solutions for applying the electrical/electromechanical stimulation in microscale-oriented studies, namely in cell cultures performed in microfluidic, or lab-ona-chip, systems.