Tuning Cell Orientation based on Localized Geometry Sensing during Cell Sheet Formation by the Micromesh Culture Technique
Kennedy Okeyo,
Senior Lecturer, Institute for Frontier Life and Medical Sciences,
Kyoto University
Cell sheets are self-assembled cellular constructs with potential application to regenerative medicine and cell-based therapy. Indeed, ongoing researches have demonstrated the potential application of cell-sheets in the regeneration of the cornea, esophagus, etc, with promising results. However, for application to oriented tissues like the heart and muscle tissues, cell sheets with clearly defined global cell orientation is required. However, presently available cell sheet technologies cannot meet this task. Moreover, since the most widely employed cell sheet fabrication technique involves the use of temperature-responsive culture vessels and other similar culture platforms, cell sheet damage during harvesting from such sticky culture platforms presents a major obstacle. In this talk, we present a simpler and easy-to-implement cell sheet fabrication approach which utilizes adhesion-limiting micromeshes as inducers of self-assembly mediated solely by cell-cell adhesion in a suspension. We demonstrate that tuning the mesh microstructure, such as mesh shape and size, can enable us to control whole-sheet cell orientation, a process which occurs naturally based on geometry sensing capability of cells. We also show that cell sheets can be generated in a suspension, eliminating the need for expensive harvesting strategies.
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