Cell Culture Monitoring using Coplanar Electrochemical Transistors

Abstract

In vitro cell death process monitoring is a method widely used in medical and pharmacological studies to know the effect of drugs and toxins on tissue models. This work presents a study of cell viability using commercial platforms designed for the generation of electrochemical transistors as sensor devices for different cultures of HEK294 embryonic kidney cells. In this work, we cover the idea of using an electrochemical transducer-based device to measure the number of cells deposited or growing on the source-drain channel. Using this method, it has been observed that the deposited cells behave like the semi-conductor material. Therefore, drain-source intensity versus gate-source voltage varies depending on the number of cells that are covering the drain-source system, with the measured intensity increasing with the growing number of cells.The electrochemical signals of different cultures have been compared to the number of cells measured by microscopy and a correlation has been performed. Different cell cultures have been evaluated before and after, and considerable decreases in current intensity have been observed, indicating that damage has taken place.Therefore, these transistors have proven to be an alternative for the study of cell viability, maintaining the integrity of the sample and being able to increase the number of studies performed on it. In addition, the monitoring of the evolution of cellular activity can be performed simpler and faster, providing comparable results with the advantage of maintaining a usable sample.This work was supported by the Project "NANOBIO-TEER" (IDE/2018/000485 and IDE/2018/000415), co-financed through IDEPA and ERDF fund.