Left‐Right Symmetry or Asymmetry of Cells on Stripe‐Like Micropatterned Material Surfaces

Abstract

Material surfaces can induce cell responses such as contact guidance, yet little attention has been paid to further cell orientation. Herein, we report an interesting phenomenon of cell orientation beyond the classic contact guidance on a stripe‐like micropattern with cell‐adhesive arginine‐ glycine‐aspartate (RGD) peptides on a nonfouling background decorated by poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). Such a micropattern with cell adhesion contrast led to significant contact guidance after cell seeding. What is more, the localized and elongated cells were found to be further orientated out of the adhesive stripes, and even an anticlockwise rotation was observed for rat mesenchymal stem cells (rMSCs). The left‐right asymmetry of rMSCs stood only in statistics, for we observed all cases including clockwise orientation, anticlockwise orientation or just keeping the orientation of previous contact guidance. We further found that human foreskin fibroblasts (HFFs) preferred a clockwise rotation, while human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and human umbilical vascular endothelial cells (HUVECs) exhibited no significant preference to either direction, which indicated that the left‐right symmetry or asymmetry was cell‐type dependent. The present report has partially confirmed the cell chirality and revealed its complexity, calling for further careful and comprehensive investigation of the challenging topic of cell chirality on material surfaces.