Bioreactor systems are essentially required for stem cell bioprocessing

As stem cell technologies have rapidly advanced, the stem cell therapy market has been forecast to reach hundreds of millions of USD in market value within the next 5 years. Regulatory frameworks throughout the stem cell market have been concurrently established, which will encourage the advent of a variety of stem cell products in our society. Given the circumstances, stem cell bioprocessing has emerged as one of the most critical fields of research to address a number of issues that currently exist in manufacturing clinical-grade stem cells at an industrial scale. Highly specialized bioreactor designs are at the center of essentially required technologies in the field of stem cell bioprocessing, which ultimately aim for automated, standardized, traceable, cost-effective, safe, and regulatory-compliant manufacture of stem cell-based products. In this review, recently developed bioreactor designs to introduce important regulatory factors to three-dimensional stem cell culture are exemplified, and prerequisites for the ideal bioreactor systems for stem cell bioprocessing are discussed.