Design of a microfeature scaffold for tissue engineering

This paper describes a microfeature scaffold that is being developed for tissue engineering. Typically, cells are grown on scaffolds that are designed to influence and direct their phenotype. By changing one or more properties of the scaffold, such as topography, it is possible to affect cellular phenotypes, including adhesion, orientation and function. In this work, the width of microscale patterns on a polydimethylsiloxane scaffold will be varied to determine its effect on the orientation of cells in culture. If successful, this work may be applied toward research for the development of engineered tissues.