One of the most exciting discoveries in biotechnology and medicine over the past 20 years has been the realization that behaviors of cells not only depend on the cells’ internal factors, such as genes and protein levels, but also depend on the microenvironment the cells are experiencing. As a result, a happy marriage between drug screening and engineering efforts to create physiological cell culture environment has significantly transformed practices in pharmaceutical R&D. New technologies such as 3D cultures, tissue organoids, and organs-on-chips are increasingly popular to replace conventional petri dishes. Investment in new technologies of cell-based screening may significantly bring down the overall cost of drug development, for instance by reducing the number of animals sacrificed and duration of the animal testing.

For 3D cell cultures in fibrous ECM, such as collagen and fibronectin, it is possible to steer the ECM fibers by controlling the gelation process. Advanced Tissue Microsystem has developed MicroTissue, a device that robustly control the direction and coherence of ECM alignment in 3D cell cultures. Here the coherence quantify the relative level of alignment.

In a MicroTissue device, cell-embedding ECM is sandwiched between two large liquid reservoirs. Therefore, one can simultaneously control the chemical background such as by forming a drug concentration gradient, or by inducing chemotaxis of the cells. This chemical background and aligned ECM will jointly regulate cell behaviors.