Research Highlights

Understanding the cellular response to chemical and physical factors is important for various biological and biomedical studies. Among the many parameters that are tested in this context on microfabricated platforms are substrate topographical features such as size and shape of surface features. While microfabricated platforms offer a controlled way to study the effects of highly specific topographies on cells (e.g., periodic nanoandmicrogrooves), they are often difficult and expensive to fabricate. More importantly, due to the innate lack of feature randomness, these platforms do not faithfully emulate the diversity of feature size and placement that is present in vivo in the extracellularmatrix. To address this shortcoming, Khine and colleagues developed a shrink-film based cell culture platform that incorporates a variety of nanoand microfeatures with extended size ranges and periodicities. Chen et al. began with prestressed polyethylene (PE), a commonly available shrink film, and oxidized it by exposure to oxygen plasma for up to 15 min; this process formed a thin stiff layer on the top surface of the film. They then fixed two