Micropatterned surfaces: techniques and applications in cell biology

Abstract

Importance of the field: Engineering of cell culture substrates provides a unique opportunity for precise control of the cellular microenvironment with both spatial as well as temporal resolutions. This greatly enhances studies of cell–cell, cell–matrix and cell–factor interaction studies in vitro.Areas covered in this review: The technologies used for micropatterning in the biological field over the last decade and new applications in the last few years for dynamic control of surfaces, tissue engineering, drug discovery, cell–cell interactions and stem cell studies are presented.What the reader will gain: The reader will gain knowledge on the state of the art in micropatterning and its wide ranging applications in cell patterning, with new pathways to control the cell environment.Take home message: Micropatterning of cells has been studied and developed enough to be widely applied ranging from single cell assays to tissue engineering. Techniques have evolved from many-step processes to direct writing of biologically selective patterns.