Effect of Replicated Polymeric Substrate with Lotus Surface Structure on Adipose-Derived Stem Cell Behaviors a Kyoung Je Cha, b Kwang-Sook Park, b Sun-Woong Kang, Byung-Hyun Cha, Bong-Kee Lee, In-Bo Han, Dong Ah Shin, Dong Sung Kim,* Soo-Hong Lee* Introduction Interaction between cells and topological structures on a substrate is of great importance in understanding the biological mechanisms between cells and physically controlled in vitro microenvironments along with duro- taxis. [1] In the past few years, micro/nano fabrication technologies have been applied for control of topological micro/nano surface structures on biomaterial substrates. [2] Since the first study reporting [3] that the orientation, migration, and cytoskeletal organization of cells were influenced by the topological structures of the substrate, many studies have been conducted in an effort to control cellular behaviors by diversification of topological struc- tures based on micro/nano fabrication technologies. Indeed it has been reported that the micro or nano structures on polymeric substrate could alter cellular behaviors, such as cell orientation, adhesion, viability, morphology, motility, proliferation, and even differentiation. [4] For example, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micro post structures could accelerate cell proliferation and osteogenic differentiation Full Paper K. J. Cha, Prof. D. S. Kim Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, 790-784 Pohang, Republic of Korea E-mail: smkds@postech.ac.kr K.-S. Park, Dr. S.-W. Kang, B.-H. Cha, Prof. S.-H. Lee Department of Biomedical Science, CHA University, 135-081 Seoul, Republic of Korea E-mail: soohong@cha.ac.kr Prof. B.-K. Lee School of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Chonnam National University, 500-757 Gwangju, Republic of Korea Prof. I.-B. Han, Prof. D. A. Shin Department of Neurosurgery, CHA University, 463-712 Seongnam, Republic of Korea a Supporting Information for this article is available from the Wiley Online Library or from the author. b Kyoung Je Cha and Kwang-Sook Park contributed equally to this work. We fabricated polystyrene substrates with lotus leaf surface structure (LLSS) and investigated cell behaviors, including attachment, morphology, proliferation, and differentiation of adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) on them. Compared to the flat substrate, the LLSS substrate induced higher cell attachment rate, but did not significantly change the cell proliferation rate. In addition, ASCs on the LLSS substrate exhibited rela- tively narrower spreading morphology and less orga- nized cytoskeleton, there by resulting in smaller sizes of cells than those on the flat substrate. According to histochemical staining and RT-PCR analysis, the LLSS substrate induced higher adipogenic differentiation of ASCs than the flat substrate, while chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation were decreased. Macromol. Biosci. 2011, 11, 1357–1363 ß 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim wileyonlinelibrary.com DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100134 1357