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.
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, skeletal muscle tissue, 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.