Cell Manipulation Technologies

Activities of cells are dependent on extracellular niches, which change quite dynamically. Dynamic substrates whose chemical and/or physical properties can be controlled by an external stimulus are useful to resolve how cells respond to such dynamic environmental changes. Moreover, they are useful for cell manipulations, such as heterotypic cell coculturing, cell migration induction, and cell sheet harvesting. We have developed for the first time a dynamic substrate based on the photocleavage reaction of the 2-nitrobenzyl group. One of the biggest advantages of the photochemical approach is its high spatiotemporal resolution. However, there is a lot of room for innovation to improve the switching efficiency and to expand the time window of its usage. This chapter discusses the developmental history of our photoactivatable substrates. Readers will notice how it is technically challenging to meet these two requirements on a single substrate. We also briefly refer to their applications to cell migration studies.