Mechanical regulation of cellular adhesion onto honeycomb-patterned porous scaffolds by altering the elasticity of material surfaces

In this report, we show the preparation of honeycomb scaffolds for cell culturing by using "breath figure" method, and we found that their mechanical and topographical properties strongly affect the adhesion of fibroblasts. By photo-cross-linking of the poly(1,2-butadiene), the hardness of the honeycomb scaffold can be successfully controlled without any surface chemical changes, and detail modulus values of scaffolds were measured by atomic force microscopy. We found that only small numbers of the cells adhered on the softer honeycomb scaffolds, which has even higher modulus value than conventional gels, comparing with flat films and a hard honeycomb scaffold. These results indicate that the elastomeric honeycomb substrates are useful for evaluating the effect of the mechanical signal-derived geometry on the transduction system of cells.