Liquid crystal elastomer substrates with predesigned splay and bend to control growth and migration of fibroblast cells

Controlling cell growth and proliferation is important for tissue engineering and biomedical applications. We develop liquid crystal elastomer substrates with photopatterned surface topography and in-plane director (1) in order to explore the effect of splay and bend deformation on the growth of human fibroblast cells. In the one dimensional pattern of splay and bend stripes, the cells show a preferential growth in the splay regions. The nuclei of cells growing in the splay regions exhibit a higher aspect ratio as compared to cells growing in the bend regions. In tissues with edges that mimic wounds and are perpendicular to the splay-bend stripes, the cells migrate faster in the splay regions with velocity vector antiparallel to the splay vector ndivn. This work demonstrates that the active force caused by gradients of the orientational order in tissues triggers polar migration of cells.

(1) Turiv T, et al. (2020) Topology control of human fibroblast cells monolayer by liquid crystal elastomer. Science Advances 6(20):eaaz6485.