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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Biotechnol. 2016 Sep 2;35(2):172–183. doi: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2016.08.001

Figure 3. Micropatterned co-cultures.

Figure 3

(A) Tissue culture polystyrene (or glass) can be uniformly coated with extracellular matrix protein (ECM) such as collagen and protected with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp. Exposed areas of ECM are ablated under oxygen plasma, leaving micropatterned ECM islands that match the geometry of the PDMS stamp. Hepatocytes selectively attach to ECM islands, and nonparenchymal cells (NPCs) fill in the surrounding area. (B) An industry standard 96-well plate showing uniform hepatocyte islands micropatterned using the process in panel A. The NPCs used in this example are 3T3-J2 murine embryonic fibroblasts surrounding the primary human hepatocyte colonies. Reprinted from [6] with permission from Sage Publications. More recently, MPCCs have been adapted to a 384-well plate format by the Bhatia group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.