It is known that embryonic skin can heal without scarring prior to the first trimester. Although the reasons for this remarkable ability to recover from a wound are not completely understood, it is known that the nature of the collagen making up the embryonic skin becomes progressively disorganized and disoriented with age. This lecture describes a method of distributing thin layers of soluble collagen at the air/water interface. These films can sustain high surface pressures and can be subjected to surface flow that lead to uniform orientation of the collagen protein. This orientation is verified directly at the air/water interface by measuring dichroism arising from sirius red dye molecules that are intercalated within the collagen chains. Appropriate Langmuir-Blodgett deposition of the layers onto smooth substrates results in coatings of uniaxially oriented protein. The influence of collagen orientation on the growth and proliferation of both human fibroblast cells and adipose-derived stem cells has been studied. It is demonstrated that these substates cause the cells to become polarized and oriented parallel to the collagen orientation. In addition, the cells proliferate to a much greater extent on the oriented collagen in comparison with standard cell culture media.