Bioreactors for specialized tissues[edit]

A bioreactor used to ferment ethanol from corncob waste being loaded with yeast.

Many cells and tissues, especially mammalian ones, must have a surface or other structural support
in order to grow, and agitated environments are often destructive to these cell types and tissues.
Higher organisms, being auxotrophic, also require highly specialized growth media. This poses a
challenge when the goal is to culture larger quantities of cells for therapeutic production purposes,
and a significantly different design is needed compared to industrial bioreactors used for growing
protein expression systems such as yeast and bacteria. [citation needed]
Many research groups have developed novel bioreactors for growing specialized tissues and cells
on a structural scaffold, in attempt to recreate organ-like tissue structures in-vitro. Among these
include tissue bioreactors that can grow heart tissue, [6][7] skeletal muscle tissue,[8] ligaments, cancer
tissue models, and others. Currently, scaling production of these specialized bioreactors for
industrial use remains challenging and is an active area of research.
For more information on artificial tissue culture, see tissue engineering.