Figure 1:

Pictorial representation of cells on 2D and 3D substrates. (A) Represents how cells lay on a planar substrate, where cells are polarized on one side and media contacts half of the cell surface. (B) Hanging Drop Cell Culture cells grow in a cluster where only the outer layers of cells have good contact to the culture medium. (C) Hydrogel Cell Culture cells make discrete connections to hydrogel scaffold. The scaffold can be fibrous or more amorphous, with the scaffold being hydrated. (D) Paper based cell culture fibrous scaffold material where the fibers are typically much larger than the size of a cell. (E) Fiber based cell culture: Fibers can be tuned to sizes ranging from 10’s of nanometers to 10’s of microns.