How light can help in building tissues

Building tissues from cells as their basic building block is a promising approach in tissue engineering and allows assembling cells into micro-tissues with high precision, which is not possible with material-based approaches. The challenge lies in controlling when and where cells bind to each other. Using visible light as a trigger for cell-cell interactions provides the required spatiotemporal control without interfering with other cellular processes. This provides a new way to assemble multicellular structures with numerous potential applications in cell biology and regenerative medicine. © 2020, Die Autoren.