Versatile electrochemial sensor for tissue culturing and sample handling

Culturing of organtypic brain tissues is a routine procedure in neural research. The visual inspection of the medium is the only way of determining the state of the tissue. At the end of culturing, post-processing techniques such as HPLC can be used to measure the concentration of the secreted metabolites in the waste products.

Continuous measurements would enable improved monitoring as compared to the end-point assay. Here, we developed a sensor system capable of real time measurements of the analytes directly secreted from the tissue. The presented system can be readily integrated in the standard procedures allowing for better assessment of the progress of the culturing.

The sensor system was initially developed for monitoring of cells and tissue cultures but has lately been considered for, and tested in, a wide range of applications. Some of these include pathogen detection and integration in microfluidic devices for sample preparation. In this work we present the development of the sensor system along with results on characterization by impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry.

Furthermore we present recent results on integration of the sensor as well as amperometric detection of dopamine as a preliminary proof of concept.