The importance of engineering surfaces both at the mi- cro- and nano-scale is being demonstrated in many areas of research spanning the physical to life sciences. Surface topography patterning has been addressed by a wide va- riety of approaches. Advanced techniques such as the many manifestations of lithography have shown that sur- faces could be patterned in a spectrum of methods for cre- ating a plethora of architectures on planar and non-planar surfaces. Briefly soft lithography, a technique pioneered by Whitesides et al. [1] has been shown to pattern sur- faces to nano-resolution over a large area. This technique has now been applied over a whole host of applications in particular in the biomedical area [2–4], where, for exam- ple, proteins and other cell friendly materials have been seeded in a pre-organised pattern for promoting the mi- gration of cells to that architecture. This technique has now been explored for observing the subcellular structure, which has truly revolutionised “surface patterning” [5]. The technique described above falls into the category of non-jet-based surface engineering methodologies. In this communication, we focus on jet-based methods of surface engineering. This is a relatively new area, which has been discovered with the rapid developments made with jetting techniques such as ink-jet printing [6, 7]. In summary, ink-jet printing is a technique, which explores expansion systems within needles for squeezing a meas- ured quantity of media through a needle for controlled deposition on a wide variety of surfaces. The process has been coupled with other techniques such as lasers where the deposited features from a particulate suspension have been controlled as residues in the few micrometers (<10 μm). However, ink-jets have an in-born technical obstacle, which limits its resolution to the several tens of micrometers at best [8, 9]. This is primarily brought about by the jetting technique itself, which precludes the depo- sition of nanodroplets for finally forming nano-residues. Short Communication A unique physical-chemistry approach for fabricating cell friendly surfaces Scott Irvine 1, 2 , Alice C. Sullivan 3 , Jean R. McEwan 2 and Suwan N. Jayasinghe 4 1 Molecular Immunology Unit, Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK 2 The Royal Free and University College London Medical School, The Rayne Institute, London, UK 3 School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK 4 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, London, UK Recent interests in the fabrication of bio/cell-friendly surfaces are consistently gaining much sci- entific coverage as these methods could be explored as novel regenerative and therapeutic me- dicinal protocols. Essentially two main components govern this aspect, the processing method- ology possessing the required robustness to fabricate a wide range of materials and, not least, the synthesised materials that need to be cell-compatible both in the short and long term after pro- cessing. In the study reported here we have combined one such robust jetting approach with a spe- cially formulated siloxane sol. This has several unique properties in itself, and these have been demonstrated here to have a positive effect on the seeded cells. The current work demonstrates that this approach has great promise as a novel methodology for surface engineering for a wide range of applications spanning the physical to the life science areas of research. Keywords: Directed assembly · Electrosprays · Living siloxane sol · Nanobiotechnology · Surface science and engineering Correspondence: Dr. Suwan N. Jayasinghe, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE, UK E-mail: s.jayasinghe@ucl.ac.uk Fax: +44-207-3880180 Abbreviations: PVSMC, porcine vascular smooth muscle cells; RASMC, rabbit aorta smooth muscle cells Received 11 June 2007 Revised 10 July 2007 Accepted 10 July 2007 Biotechnology Journal DOI 10.1002/biot.200700111 Biotechnol. J. 2008, 3, 124–128 124 © 2008 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim