Nanofiber membranes with controllable microwells and structural cues and their use in forming cell microarrays and neuronal networks.

There is a strong demand for cell culture substrates with arrayed microwells and controllable structural cues in many biological applications.[1,2] For example, such substrates are needed for fabricating cell microarrays to be used in high-throughput screening of a large number of test samples, and this approach is beneficial to drug screening, toxicology, stem cell research, and cell therapy.[3] Similarly, formation of neuronal networks could be studied in vitro through the use of arrayed microwells connected by structural cues, and this approach can be employed to examine synapse formation as well as the development and function of neuronal assemblies.[4,5] Most studies involving the formation of cell microarrays and neural networks have concentrated on the patterning of cell attractive or repulsive materials at pre-defined locations of a flat or contoured surface.[6] In general, the procedures are typically complex, costly, time-consuming, and require sophisticated techniques such as photolithography, e-beam writing, and focused ion beam (FIB) machining in order to generate the nanoscale structural cues.[7–10]