Eukaryotic cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with spatially varying orientational order that affects important physiological processes such as apoptosis and cell migration. The challenge is how to impart a predesigned map of orientational order onto a growing tissue. Here, we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayers of human dermal fibroblasts with predesigned orientational patterns and topological defects using a photoaligned liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) that swells anisotropically in an aqueous medium. The patterns inscribed into the LCE are replicated by the tissue monolayer and cause a strong spatial variation of cells phenotype, their surface density, and number density fluctuations. Unbinding dynamics of defect pairs intrinsic to active matter is suppressed by anisotropic surface anchoring allowing the estimation of the elastic characteristics of the tissues. The demonstrated patterned LCE approach has potential to control the collective behavior of cells in living tissues, cell differentiation, and tissue morphogenesis.

Control of cells behavior through topography of substrates is an important theme in biomedical applications. Among many materials used as substrates, polymers show advantages since they can be tailored by chemical functionalization. Fabrication of polymer substrates with nano‐ and microscale topography requires processing by lithography, microprinting, etching, and so forth. In this work, we introduce a different approach based on anisotropic elastic properties of polymerized smectic A (SmA) liquid crystal elastomer (LCE). When the SmA liquid crystal coating is deposited onto a substrate with planar alignment of the molecules, it develops nanogrooves at its free surface. After photopolymerization, these nanogrooves show an excellent ability to align human dermal fibroblasts over large areas. The alignment quality is good for both bare SmA LCE substrates and for substrates coated with fibronectin. The SmA LCE nano‐topographies show a high potential for tissue engineering.

Despite a promising potential for mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in tissue regeneration, a major challenge in MSC-based therapy has been associated with poor cell survival and low levels of cell integration into host tissue following transplantation. The objective of this study was to develop a gelatin-based colloidal microgel platform that enables the encapsulation of viable MSCs as well as confer fine-tuning of mechanical stiffness and low cytotoxicity. In this study, we report a facile method of fabricating gelatin-based microgel spheres for the encapsulation of MSCs using a water-in-oil mini-emulsification method, which is covalently crosslinked by genipin. At a given seeding cell number, there was a positive correlation between the size of the microsphere and the number of encapsulated MSCs. Controlling the crosslinking degree of gelatin matrix enabled a fine-tuning of mechanical stiffness of gel microsphere. MSCs within softer microgel exhibit more spread morphology than the cells in the stiffer matrix, while cells within stiffer matrix become more elongated morphology. Importantly, we show that the colloidal gelatin microgel could support the viability and differentiation of encapsulated MSCs in a pro-inflammatory environment. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using genipin-crosslinked gelatin gel microspheres as an injectable carrier of MSCs for tissue engineering applications, which can be further explored for MSC-based cell therapy for tissue repair. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 106A: 2753-2761, 2018.