Performance of Liquid Crystalline Elastomers on Biological Cell Response: A Review

Abstract

Dynamic interplay between extracellular matrix with anisotropic structure and biological cells has directed the scaffold path of development toward the utilization of actuation-responsive biomaterials. Among stimuli-responsive polymers, liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs), owing to attachment of highly anisotropic mesogenic units to the amorphous elastomeric chains, are able to reveal reversible orientational order. Dynamic order–disorder phase transition and stimuli-responsiveness are the main factors to consider them as rationally smart mimickers of biological cell topology. This Review explains briefly the structures and synthesis methods of LCEs as well as their materiobiology with an emphasis on biochemical and biomechanical features of cells from molecular view. In this regard, some indispensable factors such as quasi-liquid crystalline behavior of cells, degree of orientational order in different cells and liquid crystalline induced topographical signals as growth enhancing agent for cells are investigated. Moreover, the interactions of cell-liquid crystalline substrate and the performance of LCE scaffolds on various cell lines response are given as an overview.