Multi-well Microelectrode Arrays Research Articles

Evaluation of multi-well microelectrode arrays for neurotoxicity screening using a chemical training set

Microelectrode array (MEA) approaches have been proposed as a tool for detecting functional changes in electrically excitable cells, including neurons, exposed to drugs, chemicals or particles. However, conventional single well-MEA systems lack the throughput necessary for screening large numbers of uncharacterized compounds. Recently, multi-well MEA (mwMEA) formats have become available to address the need for increased throughput. The current experiments examined the effects of a training set of 30 chemicals on spontaneous activity in networks of cortical neurons grown on mwMEA plates. Each plate contained 12 wells with 64 microelectrodes/well, for a total of 768 channels. Of the 30 chemicals evaluated, 23 were known to alter neuronal function in vivo (“positives”), including 6 GABAergic and 3 glutamatergic antagonists/agonists, 4 pyrethroids, 3 metals, 2 cholinesterase inhibitors, 2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists, valproic acid, verapamil, and fluoxetine. Seven compounds expected to have no effect on neuronal function were tested as “negatives” (glyphosate, acetaminophen, salicylic acid, paraquat, saccharin, d-sorbitol and amoxicillin). Following collection of 33min of baseline activity, chemical effects (50μM or highest soluble concentration) were recorded for 33min. Twenty of the positives altered the mean network spike rate by more than the 14% threshold (two standard deviations from the mean for DMSO control). The three positives without effect were bifenthrin, nicotine and imidacloprid. None of the negative compounds caused a change in activity beyond the threshold. Based on these results, the mwMEA assay has both high sensitivity (87% identification of positive compounds) and specificity (100% identification of negative compounds). These experiments demonstrate the capacity of mwMEAs to screen compounds for neurotoxic effects mediated by a broad variety of mechanisms.

Agarose microwell based neuronal micro-circuit arrays on microelectrode arrays for high throughput drug testing

For cell-based biosensor applications, dissociated neurons have been cultured on planar microelectrode arrays (MEAs) to measure the network activity with substrate-embedded microelectrodes. There has been a need for a multi-well type platform to reduce the data collection time and increase the statistical power for data analysis. This study presents a novel method to convert a conventional MEA into a multi-well MEA with an array of micrometre-sized neuronal culture ('neuronal micro-circuit array'). An MEA was coated first with cell-adhesive layer (poly-D-lysine) which was subsequently patterned with a cell-repulsive layer (agarose hydrogel) to both pattern the cell adhesive region and isolate neuronal micro-circuits from each other. For a few weeks, primary hippocampal neurons were cultured on the agarose microwell MEA and the development of spontaneous electrical activities were characterized with extracellular action potentials. Using neurotransmission modulators, the simultaneous monitoring of drug responses from neuronal micro-circuit arrays was also demonstrated. The proposed approach will be powerful for neurobiological functional assay studies or neuron-based biosensor fields which require repeated trials to obtain a single data point due to biological variations.