Cell-cell communication plays a critical role in a myriad of processes, such as homeostasis, angiogenesis, and carcinogenesis, in multi-cellular organisms. Monolayer cell models have notably improved our understanding of cellular interactions. However, the cultured cells on the planar surfaces adopt a two-dimensional morphology, which poorly imitates cellular organization in vivo, providing physiologically-irrelevant cell responses. Non-planar surfaces comprising various patterns have demonstrated great abilities in directing cellular growth and producing different cell morphologies. In recent years, a few topographical substrates have provided valuable information about cell-cell signalling, however, none of these studies have reported a three-dimensional (3D) cell morphology. Here, we introduce a structurally tunable topographical platform that can maintain cell coupling while inducing a true 3D cell morphology. Optical imaging and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching are used to illustrate these capabilities. Our analyses suggest that the intercellular signalling on the present platform, which we propose is mainly through gap junctions, is comparable to that in natural tissue.

在多细胞生物中，细胞间通讯在无数过程（例如稳态，血管生成和癌变）中起着至关重要的作用。单层细胞模型显着改善了我们对细胞相互作用的理解。但是，在平面上培养的细胞具有二维形态，很难模仿体内的细胞组织。，提供与生理无关的细胞反应。包含各种图案的非平面表面已证明具有指导细胞生长和产生不同细胞形态的强大能力。近年来，一些地形底物提供了有关细胞信号传导的有价值的信息，但是，这些研究都没有报道三维（3D）细胞形态。在这里，我们介绍了一种结构可调的地形平台，该平台可以在诱导真正的3D细胞形态的同时保持细胞耦合。光漂白后的光学成像和荧光恢复可用于说明这些功能。我们的分析表明，我们提出的当前平台上的细胞间信号传导主要通过间隙连接，与天然组织中的细胞间信号传导相当。