Figure 1.

Schematic illustration of the fabrication of multilayered heparin hydrogel microstructure. A combination of micromolding and microcontact printing was used to create microwells where both walls and floor were composed of heparin hydrogel. This protocol allowed to selectively pattern the bottom of the wells with collagen I to promote attachment of hepatocytes. A co-culture could be created by seeding 3T3 fibroblasts on the same surfaces, resulting in stromal cell attachment around the hepatocyte clusters, on the heparin gel walls of the microwells.