Bioengineers develop lotus leaf-inspired system for cancer research

Alexandria Carter. Credit: Gustavo Raskosky The lotus leaf is a pioneer of self-cleaning, water-repellant engineering. Water droplets all but hover on its surface, whose unique texture traps air in its nanosized ridges and folds. Rice University bioengineers report harnessing the lotus effect to develop a system for culturing cancer cell clusters that can shed light on hard-to-study tumor properties. The new zinc oxide-based culturing surface mimics the lotus leaf surface structure, providing a highly tunable platform for the high-throughput generation of three-dimensional nanoscale tumor models. The superhydrophobic array device (SHArD) designed by Rice bioengineer Michael King and collaborators can be Read More