The Art of Engineering Biomimetic Cellular Microenvironments

Abstract

Cells and their surrounding microenvironment exist in dynamic reciprocity, where bidirectional feedback and feedforward crosstalk drives essential processes in development, homeostasis, and disease. With the ongoing explosion of customizable biomaterial innovation for dynamic cell culture, an ever-expanding suite of user-programmable scaffolds now exists to probe cell fate in response to spatiotemporally controlled biophysical and biochemical cues. Here, we highlight emerging trends in these efforts, emphasizing strategies that offer tunability over complex network mechanics, present biomolecular cues anisotropically, and harness cells as physiochemical actuators of the pericellular niche. Altogether, these material advances will lead to breakthroughs in our basic understanding of how cells interact with, integrate signals from, and influence their surrounding microenvironment.