Morphological changes of neurons on self-organized honeycomb patterned films

Recently, micro-nano fabrication has become an important way to modify material's surfaces for reguration of adhesion and growth of cells in tissue engineering. In neuroscience, micro-patterns on culture substrates are critical for neurological implants and are also significant to investigate neuron-patterned surface interactions. In previous studies, the patterns have been fabricated by lithography and microcontact printing techniques. However, these techniques need high energy and many processes and restricted can only treat a list of materials for substrates. In this study, we prepared self-organized honeycomb-patterned films by a casting technique. We cultured neurons on the patterned films for neural tissue engineering and investigated the morphology of neural cell bodies and neural network by a confocal scanning microscope and a scanning electron microscope. We found that neurons formed neural network along the honeycomb patterns and that the morphologies of attached cells depended on pore size of the patterned films. These results suggest that honeycomb-patterned films provide guidance of neurite extension and influence the morphologies of neurons.