Behnam Zamanian, Mahdokht Masaeli, Jason W. Nichol, Masoud Khabiry, Matthew J. Hancock, Hojae Bae, Ali Khademhosseini
Khademhosseini Laboratory, MIT Center for Biomedical Engineering at Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Fluorescence Image from Inverted Microscope

"Cell-laden hydrogels show great promise for creating engineered tissues. However, a major shortcoming with these systems has been the inability to fabricate structures with controlled micrometer-scale features on a biologically relevant length scale. The image illustrates the capabilities of a new method to create centimeter-scale, cell-laden hydrogels through the assembly of shape-controlled microgels on a liquid–air interface.  A hierarchical surface tension directed assembly process created this hexagonal pattern of hexagonal gelatin methacrylate microgels with 3T3 (green) and HepG2 (red) cells."