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Abstract
Recent advances in the convergence of the biological, chemical, physical, and engineering sciences have opened new avenues of research into the interfacing of diverse biological moieties with inanimate platforms. A main aspect of this field, the integration of live cells with micro-machined platforms for high throughput and bio-sensing applications, is the subject of the present review. These unique hybrid systems are configured in a manner that ensures positioning of the cells in designated patterns, and enables cellular viability maintenance, and monitoring of cellular functionality. Here we review both animate and inanimate surface properties and how they affect cellular attachment, describe relevant modifications of both types of surfaces, list technologies for platform engineering and for cell deposition in the desired configurations, and discuss the influence of various deposition and immobilization methods on the viability and performance of the immobilized cells.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Pascal Colpo and Laura Ceriotti with the section on chemical functionalization of ITO on glass substrates. The authors also thank Sefi Vernick for his helpful artwork and Rakefet Ofek Almog for her contribution on polymeric biochips.
Declaration of interest
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the European Community FP6 program (“Toxichip” project no. 027900), US-Israel Binational Research and Development Fund (BARD), contract US-3864-06, and the German–Israeli BMBF-MOST Cooperation in Water Technology (grant number WT0601).The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.