초록 |
Manipulating cell organization in vitro has been a great issue in tissue engineering as some native tissues can perform their biological function whose performance is closely related to their cellular organizations. For instance, the level of cell alignment has a great impact on contraction/relaxation for muscle tissue and wound formation/healing for connective tissue. Here, we demonstrate a new type of cell-aligning support which is based on sublimable liquid crystal(LC). The self-assembly behavior of the LC enables the formation of periodic nanogrooves over a large area within 5 minutes, which then guides the orientation of the cells. The cellular organization, behavior, and morphology are investigated in this work. The robust nature of the LC allows the repetitive use three times, and the oriented cell sheets are transferred to other glass substrates. We believe that our work will pave the way for the LC field to advance to the bioengineering and tissue architecture field. |