Adhesion and Growth of Neuralized Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells on Parylene-C/SiO₂ Substrates

Neuronal patterning on microfabricated architectures has developed rapidly over the past few years, together with the emergence of soft biocompatible materials and tissue engineering scaffolds. Previously, we introduced a patterning technique based on serum and the biopolymer parylene-C, achieving highly compliant growth of primary neurons and astrocytes on different geometries. Here, we expanded this technique and illustrated that neuralized cells derived from mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) followed stripes of variable widths with conformity equal to or higher than that of primary neurons and astrocytes. Our results indicate the presence of undifferentiated mESCs, which also conformed to the underlying patterns to a high degree. This is an exciting and unexpected outcome, as molecular mechanisms governing cell and ECM protein interactions are different in stem cells and primary cells. Our study enables further investigations into the development and electrophysiology of differentiating patterned neural stem cells.