Advanced Multi-electrode-array for Drug Screening, Toxicological Test and Personalized Medicine

On-Chip extracellular electrophysiological recordings and stimulation of cultured neurons, cardiomyocytes by substrate integrated planar microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are considered the "gold standard" for millisecond-resolution, long-term, large-scale, cell noninvasive recordings and stimulation of in vitro networks. Although planar MEA platforms are used extensively, they suffer from low signal to noise ratio and low source resolution. These drawbacks are solved by tedious spike-detecting, spike-sorting and signal averaging techniques which rely on estimated parameters and require user supervision to correct errors, merge clusters and remove outliers. Averaging of recorded field potentials (FPs) leads to loss of essential information. In addition planar electrode-based MEA are "blind" to sub-threshold synaptic potentials generated by individual neurons.

Our laboratory has developed a novel approach in which micrometer-sized, extracellular gold mushroom-shaped microelectrodes (gMµEs) array simultaneously record attenuated synaptic and action potentials, from many cells, with characteristic features of intracellular recordings (the IN-CELL recording method). Complemented by the use of induced human pluripotent stem cells taken from healthy subjects and patients the gMµE array will enable to extract significantly more information with respect to planar MEA and thereby significantly facilitate the processes of drug screening and the development of personalized medicine.

Parts of the research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01NS099687. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.