Surface-Directed Assembly of Cell-Laden Microgels

Cell-laden microscale hydrogels (microgels) can be used as tissue building blocks and assembled to create 3D tissue constructs with well-defined microarchitecture. In this article, we present a bottom-up approach to achieve microgel assembly on a patterned surface. Driven by surface tension, the hydrophilic microgels can be assembled into well-defined shapes on a glass surface patterned with hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions. We found that the cuboidic microgels (similar to 100-200 mu m in width) could self-assemble into defined shapes with high fidelity to the surface patterns. The microgel assembly process was improved by increasing the hydrophilicity of the microgels containing cells stained with different dyes were fabricated to demonstrate the application of this approach for engineering microscale tissue constructs containing multiple cell types. This bottom up approach enables rapid fabrication of cell-laden microgel assemblies with pre-defined geometrical and biological features, which is easily scalable and can be potentially used in microscale tissue engineering applications, Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2010; 105: 655-662. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.