One-step fabrication of porous micropatterned scaffolds to control cell behavior

This paper reports a one-step method to fabricate highly porous micropatterned 2-D scaffold sheets. The scaffold sheets have high glucose diffusion, indicating that the porosity and pore morphology of the scaffolds are viable with respect to nutrient transport, and a micropattern for cell alignment. HUVEC culturing proved that the scaffold sheets are suitable for cell culturing. More extensive culturing experiments with mouse myoblasts, C2C12, and mouse osteoblasts, MC3T3, showed that tissue organization can be controlled; the micropattern design affects the extent of cell alignment and tissue formation. Cells are favorably settled in the micropattern and even at higher confluence levels, when the cells start to overgrow the ridges of the micropattern, these cells align themselves in the direction of the micropattern. Preliminary multi-layer stacking experiments indicate that the 2-D scaffold sheets are very promising as basis for building 3-D scaffolds. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.