BIOSOFT

Biosoft is a joint laboratory between LAAS-CNRS and Innopsys Company. The focus of our lab is the development of automated soft lithography processes for the fabrication of cell microarrays. Mastering the adhesion landscape of living cells on a surface is a tool for investigating fundamental mechanisms of cell biology such as shape control, differentiation, division, polarity or motility. The production of cell microarrays (CMA) of various shapes and dimensions allows the biologists to design specific scenarii and record how various living cells respond (neural, epithelial, tumoral and stem cells). Because technology allows reproducing identical precise patterns along well arranged periodical arrays, these observations can be made systematically over large population of cells thus reaching a high level of representativeness. The micro-contact printing of proteins of the Extra Cellular Matrix (ECM) on conventional glass slides, coverslips, or other subtrates, turned out to be an efficient method for fabricating these micro-patterned cell culture substrates. Biosoft has developed an instrument (Innostamp40) and a dedicated protocol enabling the automated production of highly reproducible functional micro-patterns in order to bring this process to a level where it could become a standard in cell biology.