Cells in the environment are in contact with the culture solution and extracellular matrix.  They sense the signals in the environment and activate signal transudation pathways to alter their behavior.  This talk will demonstrate some examples of using micropatterned biomaterials to control cell motility for individual cells and cell clusters that build upon the MANDIP principle we first reported in Advanced Materials p1084 (2007).  Micropatterned biomaterials were used to control the cell size and shape to amplify the natural directional persistence of migrating cells.  Using this approach, we can amplify this directional persistence to coerce the migration of cells indefinitely along arbitrary paths in one preset direction without chemoattractants, gradients in substrate adhesiveness, or external fields.  Cell cluster's migration pattern is strongly dependent on the initial geometry of the cell cluster.  Potential applications of MANDIP include cell-sorting, drug screening, tissue engineering, wound healing, and mechanistic studies of cell migration, cell-cell interactions, and other cellular processes requiring temporal and spatial regulation.  We have also devised a simple in vitro migration assay that offers significant improvements in reliability and ease of implementation compared to traditional �wound healing� assays.  Instead of mechanically wounding cells, confluent groups of cells, initially confined within patterns of cell-resistant polyelectrolyte, are released by electrostatic adsorption of a second, cell adhesive polyelectrolyte.

Microarray amplification of natural directional persistence (MANDIP): Engineering biomaterials for guiding cell motility

239th National Meeting (2010)

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