title: Micropatterned Hydrogel Surface with High-Aspect-Ratio Features for Cell Guidance and Tissue Growth.
abstract: Surface topography has been introduced as a new tool to coordinate cell selection, growth, morphology, and differentiation. The materials explored so far for making such structural surfaces are mostly rigid and impermeable. Hydrogel, on the other hand, was proved a better synthetic media for cell culture because of its biocompatibility, softness, and high permeability. Herein, we fabricated a poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (pHEMA) hydrogel substrate with high-aspect-ratio surface microfeatures. Such structural surface could effectively guide the orientation and shape of human mesenchymal stem cells (HMSCs). Notably, on the flat hydrogel surface, cells rounded up, whereas on the microplate patterned hydrogel surface, cells elongated and aligned along the direction parallel to the plates. The microplates were 2 μm thick, 20 μm tall, and 10-50 μm wide. The interplate spacing was 5-15 μm, and the intercolumn spacing was 5 μm. The elongation of cell body was more pronounced on the patterns with narrower interplate spacing and wider plates. The cells behaved like soft solid. The competition between surface energy and elastic energy defined the shape of the cells on the structured surfaces. The soft permeable hydrogel scaffold with surface structures was also demonstrated as being viable for long-term cell culture, and could be used to generate interconnected tissues with finely tuned cell morphology and alignment across a few centimeter sizes.
authors.affiliation: John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University , Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.|Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, Illinois 61801, United States.
authors.forename: Yuhang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University , Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.|Department of Engineering Chemistry, Chungbuk National University , Cheongju 362-763, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jin-Oh
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: You
authors.affiliation: John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University , Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.|Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University , Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.|Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University , Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.|Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology, Harvard University , Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.
authors.forename: Joanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Aizenberg
mesh_terms: D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002460:Cell Line; D006801:Humans; D020100:Hydrogels / Q000737:chemistry*; D059630:Mesenchymal Stem Cells; D011102:Polyhydroxyethyl Methacrylate
chemical_list: D020100:Hydrogels; D011102:Polyhydroxyethyl Methacrylate
keywords: cell adhesion; cell alignment; human mesenchymal stem cell; hydrogel; structured surface; tissue scaffold