I have a peculiar microscope setup which requires me to mount cells on the thin edge of a microscope slide, has this ever been achieved? So far I've attempted using polylysine to adhere cells but they don't appear to enjoy the surface. I expect the roughness of an unpolished microscope slide is causing cells to not adhere, is it possible to sufficiently polish glass for cells to stick?
Any advice welcome!
Try coating it with a hydrophobic polymer. I'm not sure the best way to achieve that (uniformly) on the edge of a slide, but if you know of any labs at your university that do photopolymerization or just polymer studies in general, they could probably figure out a way to do it.
In general cells actually prefer rough surfaces, something about the nanotopography. I would try acid washing the coverslips first (70% nitric acid for 25 minutes, rinse for 3 hours in a beaker with distilled water that is slowly flowing, then treat with 200mM NaOH for 15 minutes, rinse 3X with water and dry). Coverslips even if sterile are always dirty. I would coat the edges in fibronectin (5-10 ug/ml). It is in general the stickiest ECM protein and most cell types will attach to it.
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