Issue 17, 2011
From the journal:

Lab on a Chip

Single cell 3-D platform to study ligand mobility in cell–cell contact†

Mirjam Andreasson-Ochsner,ae   Gregory Romano,a   Maria Håkanson,a   Michael L. Smith,bf   Deborah E. Leckband,c   Marcus Textora  and  Erik Reimhult*ad  

* Corresponding authors

a Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

b Laboratory for Biologically Oriented Materials, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

c University of Illinois, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

d Department of Nanobiotechnology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna, Austria
E-mail: erik.reimhult@boku.ac.at

e Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A STAR, Singapore, Singapore

f Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, USA

Abstract

Lateral mobility and dimensionality have both been shown to influence cellular behavior, but have yet to be combined and applied in a single in vitro platform to address, e.g., cell adhesion in a setting mimicking the three-dimensional environment of neighboring cells in a reductionist way. To study the effect of the lateral mobility of cell adhesive ligands in three dimensions we present and characterize a platform, which enables patterning of single cells into microwells presenting a cell membrane mimetic interface pre-patterned to its walls. Soluble E-cadherin extracellular domains coupled through an optimized streptavidin–antibody linkage to lipids in a supported lipid bilayer (SPB) were presented on the microwell walls as either laterally mobile or immobile ligands. The fluidity was controlled through a small change in temperature by choosing phospholipids for the SPB with a lipid phase transition temperature around 30 °C. The platform thus enabled the investigation of cell adhesion to either laterally immobile or mobile E-cadherin ligands presented on the same cell membrane mimetic surface. Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells engineered to express E-cadherin that were cultured on the platform demonstrated that enhanced cadherin lateral mobility significantly decreased the formation of actin bundles and resulted in more diffuse actin organization, while constraining the cell shape to that of the microwell. This example highlights the potential to use in vitrocell culture platforms to mimic direct cell–cell interaction in a controlled environment that nevertheless captures the dynamic nature of the native cell environment.

Graphical abstract: Single cell 3-D platform to study ligand mobility in cell–cell contact

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1LC20067D
Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Jan 2011
Accepted
20 Jun 2011
First published
20 Jul 2011

Lab Chip, 2011,11, 2876-2883

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Single cell 3-D platform to study ligand mobility in cell–cell contact

M. Andreasson-Ochsner, G. Romano, M. Håkanson, M. L. Smith, D. E. Leckband, M. Textor and E. Reimhult, Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 2876 DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20067D

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