Fabrication of proton beam micromachined scaffolds for cell behaviour studies

Abstract

The main focus of this thesis is to understand cell behavior on three dimensional (3D) micro patterned substrates and to study the effects of geometrical constraints on cell motility and cell function. In this work we used scaffolds which were directly written into polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) with a focused proton beam, typically 1 MeV protons with a beam spot size of 1??1A?m2. We observed that BAE (Bovine Aortic Endothelial) cells naturally aligned with and were guided along 3D ridges and grooves. By means of cell speed calculation, we found that BAE cells on 20 A?m wide grooves/ridges are capable of faster movement compared with cells on plain PMMA surface. Studies are underway to implement the hot embossing process which will allow faster replication of 3D structure to help the analysis of the genes involved in the endothelial cell responses associated with geometrical constraints.