Abstract
Featured Application Animal testing will be soon replaced by better accepted and less expensive in-vitro cell culture models, which explains the recent demand for real-time cell culture monitoring systems. They can bring high throughput screening and could be used not only for biomedical purposes (drug discovery, toxicology, protein expression, cancer diagnostic, etc.), but also for environmental ones (qualification of pollutants cocktails, for example). Beyond this, in-situ monitoring also participates in strengthening the fundamental knowledge about cells metabolism. We review here the chemical sensors for pH, glucose, lactate, and neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine or glutamate, made of organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs), including organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and electrolyte-gated OFETs (EGOFETs), for the monitoring of cell activity. First, the various chemicals that are produced by living cells and are susceptible to be sensed in-situ in a cell culture medium are reviewed. Then, we discuss the various materials used to make the substrate onto which cells can be grown, as well as the materials used for making the transistors. The main part of this review discusses the up-to-date transistor architectures that have been described for cell monitoring to date.
Highlights
Complex biological interactions or cellular stress responses difficult to highlight using conventional biosensors, can be identified because of the changes in cellular physiology
Chemical sensing of cellular activity has been described for decades [10], to study exocytosis, which is an important biological process used by cells to secrete molecules acting as messengers in their surroundings
There are many chemicals that can be monitored in a cell culture, among which are the components of the cell culture medium, which are necessary for keeping cells alive, and the metabolites, which are produced by the cells in basic conditions or after cellular stress response due to internal or external stressors
Summary
Complex biological interactions or cellular stress responses difficult to highlight using conventional biosensors, can be identified because of the changes in cellular physiology. Recent reviews have demonstrated that it is possible to record electrical cellular activity [12], and to sense exocytosis events on conventional microelectrode arrays (MEA) [13,14]. Transistors present the advantage of transducing the recognition of (bio)chemical molecules directly into an electric signal. We will identify applications of silicon-based transistors and organic transistors The latter are promising candidates because they can work in aqueous media and physiological conditions, be low-cost, and have low-power consumption. We will identify tracks for the further development of this field
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