Immune Modulation by Design: Using Topography to Control Human Monocyte Attachment and Macrophage Differentiation

Material topography is known to influence macrophage attachment and phenotype, providing opportunities for the rational design of ‘immune-instructive’ topographies to modulate macrophage function and thus foreign body responses to biomaterials. However, no generalisable understanding of the inter-relationship between topography and cell response exists. We therefore utilise a high throughput screening approach to investigate the relationship between topography and human monocyte-derived macrophage attachment and phenotype, using a diverse library of 2176 micropatterns generated by an algorithm. We use machine learning to successfully build a model that correlates cell attachment and phenotype with a selection of descriptors, illustrating that materials can potentially be designed to induce pro-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory or regulatory immune responses, for future application in the fight against foreign body rejection of medical devices.