Microstructured hybrid scaffolds for aligning neonatal rat ventricular myocytes

In cardiac tissue engineering (TE), in vitro models are essential for the study of healthy and pathological heart tissues in order to understand the underpinning mechanisms. In this scenario, scaffolds are platforms that can realistically mimic the natural architecture of the heart, and they add biorealism to in vitro models. This paper reports a novel and robust technique to fabricate cardiovascular-mimetic scaffolds based on Parylene C and Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Parylene C is employed as a mask material for inducing hybrid and non-hybrid micropatterns to the PDMS layer. Hybrid architectures present striped hydrophobic/hydrophilic surfaces, whereas non-hybrid scaffolds only corrugated topographies. Herein, we demonstrate that wavy features on PDMS can be obtained at the micro- and nanoscale and that PDMS can be integrated into the microfabrication process without changing its intrinsic physical properties. A study of the effects of these scaffolds on the growth of Neonatal Rat Ventricular Myocytes (NRVMs) cultures reveals that cell alignment occurs only for the case of hybrid architectures made of hydrophilic PDMS and hydrophobic Parylene C