Microfabrication in Tissue Engineering and Bioartificial Organs

The drive to replace damaged tissues with `tissue engineered' constructs has led to fundamental questions regarding the importance of cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions in achieving the desired result. Photolithographic techniques coupled with standard silane chemistry can be readily adapted to reproducibly create arrays of cells on glass substrates, allowing control over the cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions of interest. These techniques have applications in bioartificial organs, in particular, and this study focuses on the utility of microfabrication in optimization of a bioartificial liver device.