Low pressure plasma processes can tune chemical composition, surface energy and topography of most substrates of biomedical interest in a well controlled way. Among the wide range of plasma-modification procedures, micro- and nano-patterning plasma-deposition processes of thin coatings are among the most interesting and novel technologies aimed to drive the behaviour of cells on surfaces. Two kind of plasma procedures will be described in this contribution, and some interesting in vitro tests will be discussed. The first one consists in the deposition of "cell-repulsive" coatings through physical masks to produce patterned surfaces; here "cell-adhesive" domains are alternated to non-adhesive ones. The second process involves the deposition of teflon-like coatings of CF@sub x@ chemical composition, including randomly distributed surface features with nanometric dimensions, which are peculiar of certain deposition conditions in modulated regime. Acknowledgments This research has been developed in the framework of the MIUR-FIRB RBNE01458S_006, COFIN '99 "Biomaterials with micro- and nano- structured surfaces" and 'NANOMED' QLKE-CT-2000 projects, whose financial contribution is gratefully acknowledged.