A biological breadboard platform for cell adhesion and detachment studies

The dynamic nature of cell adhesion and detachment, which plays a critical role in a variety of physiological and pathological phenomena, still remains unclear. This motivates the pursuit of controllable manipulation of cell adhesion and detachment for a better understanding of cellular dynamics. Here we present an addressable, multifunctional, and reusable platform, termed the biological breadboard (BBB), for spatiotemporal manipulation of cell adhesion and detachment at cellular and subcellular levels. The BBB, composed of multiple gold electrodes patterned on a Pyrex substrate, is surface-modified with arginine-glycine-aspartic acid terminated thiol (RTT) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) to achieve a cell-adhesive surface on the gold electrodes and a cell-resistive surface on the Pyrex substrate, respectively. Cell adhesion is regulated by the steric repulsion of PEG chains, while cell detachment is controlled by the reductive desorption of a gold-thiol self-assembled monolayer (SAM) at an activation potential of -0.90 to -1.65 V. Experimental characterizations using NIH 3T3 fibroblasts are presented to demonstrate the utility of our device.