MICROPATTERNED POLYMER STRUCTURES FOR CELL AND TISSUE ENGINEERING - Biologically-Responsive Hybrid Biomaterials - page 89

CHAPTER 4
MICROPATTERNED POLYMER STRUCTURES FOR CELL AND
TISSUE ENGINEERING
Kyung-Jin Jang 1 , Deok-Ho Kim 2 , Sun-Min Kim 3 , Andre Levchenko 2 and
Kahp-Yang Suh 1*
1 School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University,
Seoul 151-742, Korea
2 Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute of Cell Engineering,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Inha University, 253 Young Hyun-dong,
Nam-gu, Incheon, 402-751, Republic of Korea
* E-mail: [e-mail]
1. Introduction
There has been great interest in the development of engineering methods for
generating cellular microenvironments with biomaterials [1, 2]. Living tissues
which maintain a well-organized three dimensional architecture in vivo are
composed of various cell types, embedded in optimized hierarchical structures of
extracellular matrix (ECM). ECM is a complex assembly of many fiber proteins
forming large-scale matrix with micro/nanoscale topography. Cellular behavior
can be affected by ECM in biological and mechanical ways and thus fundamental
understanding of this active cell microenvironment is essential in advancing the
field of cellular and tissue engineering [3-7]. To better elucidate the mechanism
involved in cellular behavior and function in a microenvironment, cells have
been cultured on a variety of micropatterned substrates of natural biomaterials or
synthetic biomaterials [8]. Through precise control of mechanical, structural and
chemical properties of biomaterial surfaces, such platforms can provide an
insight into how surface properties and culture conditions can affect cell behavior
and function [9-12].
The spatial distribution of each cell type can be controlled via soft lithography
based micropatterning techniques, thus allowing one to precisely manipulate
cell-cell interactions [9]. Photolithography is the conventional patterning
technique of choice, but this lithographic technique has a number of limitations
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