During adhesion and migration, cells interact with their environment through various physicochemical forces and sensing mechanisms. Furthermore, geometrical and mechanical constraints provided by the in vivo micro-environment must be mimicked in single-cell adhesion assays to avoid artifactual results. In this context, hydrogels have become crucial, as they provide tunable platforms for studying cancer progression, stem cell differentiation, collective cell migration, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. Hence, we propose to pattern hydrogels composed of poly-(L-lysine) grafted dendrimers (DGL) and NHS-polyethylene-glycol (PEG) to promote cell alignment and directed cell migration. This novel kind of hydrogel offers precise control over viscoelastic properties, with elastic moduli ranging from 5 to 400 kPa, thus covering both physiological and pathological conditions. We demonstrate that micropatterns, generated using PRIMO (Alvéole, France), can be successfully imprinted on hydrogels surface and (1) form humps with continuously tunable heights from 2 microns to 30 microns, (2) promote cell alignment, particularly in WPMY-1 human prostatic stromal myofibroblast cell line, (3) and induce directed cell migrations. Interestingly, the creation of micropatterns also results in local modifications of the hydrogel’s mechanical properties. The relationship between illumination duration and visco-elastic properties is currently under investigation, in parallel with studies of resulting cell behavior.
Launay et al. (Sun,) studied this question.