3D Cell Co-culture System on Hydrogel Micro-Patterned Surface Fabricated by Photolithography

We present herein the 3D cell co-culture systems, which is based on the cell spheroid formation on cell-adhesion micro-patterned glass surfaces fabricated by silane coupling treatment and photoirradiation technique. The typical method for constructing cell-adhesion micro-patterned glass surface is as follows; a mixture of methacryloyl-ended PEG telechelics and Irgacure 2959 as the photoinitiator was dropped on a silanized glass surface, which was pretreated with 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate, and then the irradiation with UV light (254 nm) using a patterned mask with 100 μm aligned cavities separated by 100 μm intervals (edge-to-edge distance) was carried out. When hepatic cells (human hepatic cancer cell line and fetal mouse primary liver cell (FMLC)) were seeded onto the constructed surface, a spheroid array of these liver cells were fabricated and these hepatic functions were higher than the hepatic cells cultured on monolayer state. In this method, the co-culture of spheroids with monolayer-state cells is easily constructed and the functions of the FMLC spheroid were significantly upregulated by co-culture with nonparenhymal liver cells as feeder-cell.