Mediating Cell Adhesion Using Surface Microtexture

There is a need for surfaces that lower cell adhesion strength while maintaining cell growth to enable the next generation of cell culture surfaces for delicate primary cells and automated, high throughput workflows. In this study, we investigated the use of microtexture alone to control cell adhesion. We developed a fast, simple, and inexpensive process for creating microtextured polystyrene surfaces. These cell culture surfaces enable decreased cell adhesion strength while maintaining high cell viability and proliferation, through a simple reduction in the cell-surface contact area. Cancer cells grown on microtextured polystyrene showed significant changes in cell morphology compared with cells grown on flat polystyrene. Using image analysis to quantify cell morphology changes, we found that surface textures decreased cell area by half and led to much more elongated cell shape compared to flat surfaces. We designed a microfluidic shear force measurement platform to quantify the removal of cells from these surfaces, and showed that significantly more cells were removed from the microtextured surfaces than the flat surfaces, demonstrating that our surfaces lead to decreased cell adhesion.