Congratulations! TingTing and Yaoping’s work about highly efficient and controllable cell alignment was published on Microsystems & Nanoengineering!

In this study, a novel solid lift-off method using an ingeniously designed micropore array as a shadow mask was proposed. Efficient and precise control of cell alignment and spreading simultaneously was realized via an ingenious composite-confining structure design, with large micropores (capture pores) in central areas and small micropores (spreading pores) in surrounding areas dominating capture/alignment and adhesion/spreading, respectively.

High-throughput (2.4−3.2×10⁴/cm²) cell patterning were achieved with high efficiencies (86.2 ± 3.2%, 56.7 ± 9.4% and 51.1 ± 4.0% for single-cell, double-cell, and triple-cell, respectively). Precise control of spreading and application toward regulating cell skeleton and cell-cell junction distribution was investigated and verified using murine skeletal muscle myoblasts. To our knowledge, this is the first report to demonstrate highly efficient and controllable multi-cell alignment and adhesion/spreading simultaneously via a simple single-step solid lift-off operation. Notably, this study successfully fills a gap in the literature and promotes the effective and reproducible application of cell patterning methodologies. This work will attract extensive interests in the fields of both basic cellular mechanism research and applied medicine including organ-on-a-chip, tissue engineering, etc.

Full text can be found: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-020-00191-5

Tingting Hun^#, Yaoping Liu^#, Yechang Guo, Yan Sun*, Yubo Fan* and Wei Wang*, A micropore array-based solid lift-off method for highly efficient and controllable cell alignment and spreading. microsystems & nanoengineering 6, 86 (2020)

Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-020-00191-5