HI Yepuri,

The first question you need to ask yourself is if you wan to study the effects of flow on cells per se or on an eventual blood vessel.  If you are only looking to sheer cells, than the key word is "parallel plate flow plate" and that should take you towards various research designs or ready-to-go products from small companies.  Plates have the huge advantage of creating high sheer with low flow because of the very small gap between the cell layer and the opposite wall.  Of course, that also means that any changes (not visible to the naked eye) in that distance can have dramatic effets on the sheer value.  An other advantage is that, because of the small gap, the flow becomes rapidly laminar after it enters the chamber. 

If you want to work in a more realistic system (with a tube) you are faced with a few challenges.  You need to thicken the liquid to achieve physiological sheer stress values without having to go to very hight (turbulent) flow rates.  In addition, the flow in the system is not laminal after the junction between the system and the vessel sample because of the change in internal diameter.  The distance needed to recover laminar flow depends on the system but I have often heard the it was 10 times the diameter.  It would probably de best to test this (with Doppler or bead tracking (if tube is transparent))"

Good luck

 Hi Yepuri,

To my point, the more friendly bioreactor is one of the pneumatic type. A bubble column or the air lift (provided with a central up raising flow). Gently agitation and good mass transfer coefficients...in both cases all geometrical considerations are reported elsewere, commercially they are also available.

HI Gautham,

FiberCell Systems offers a hollow fiber system that is designed for the culture of endothelial cells under shear. The fibers are made of PVDF so you can bind any sort of matrix you like. There are 20 fibers with an ID of 800 um and a total surface area of 80 cm2 so you get enough cells for protein and DNA analysis. Shear stress of .5 dyne up to 25 dynes can be generated without changing the media. Co-cultivation can be performed as well. You can get more information on our website www.fibercellsystems.com

Hi Nicolas and Mariano,

Thank you so much for your response which is greatly helpful!

@ John, 

Thank you so much for your offer. I am looking into it.

Thanks and regards

Gautham