ABSTRACT
Nanotechnology allows for the construction of scaffold and devices that interact at the subcellular level. The application of nanotechnology to biomedical sciences is a rather new and quickly expanding eld. The successful use of microscale surface features to study a variety of cellular phenomena has led molecular and cell biologists, in collaboration with material scientists, to engage in the study of how nanoscale cellular extensions (e.g., lammelopodia and lopodia) interact with
their environment to effect cell growth, proliferation, and expression. This change in scale (several orders of magnitude lower) is motivated by the various nanoscale structures that comprise the extracellular matrix (ECM). This natural three-dimensional (3-D) topography at the nanoscale causes an increase in the surface area of the ECM of up to three orders of magnitude. This increased area over which cell-surface interactions can take place may give rise to a number of imperative functions in regulating tissue growth. Nanofabricated matrices can play an important role in answering these types of questions through the controlled and reproducible fabrication of substrates that will allow for a systematic study of surface topographies and their effects on a variety of parameters such as cell attachment, migration, and proliferation.
