Development of a platform for drug screening studies through cell-substrate impedance sensing

My master thesis project stems from the beginning of a collaboration between the Polytech- nic University of Turin and the Molecular Biotechnology Center (MBC) of the University of Turin. The aim of my project is the development of a platform for impedance measurements on cell cultures, finalised to drug screening studies. Changes of an electrical parameter as impedance reflect changes in the cells’ status: in particular, an increase in impedance is index of viability and proliferation, while an impedance decrease represents cell death. To this aim, a commercial device, the BioChip 4096E (3Brain GmbH, Switzerland) was employed and seeded with cells, since its design integrates the presence of a culture cham- ber and a certain number of electrodes, giving the possibility to conduct impedance meas- urements. The part of the work related to the experimental measurements set up was developed at the Polytechnic of Turin: an Agilent 4294A impedance analyzer was employed to execute the measures and a program in LabVIEW® 2017 was created to open the communication with the instrument and allow the user to set all the parameters for conducting the meas- ures directly from a friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI). Moreover, since 16 electrodes are available but only a couple is necessary for one measurement, the user has also the possibility to choose through the GUI the couple of electrodes for the current measurement session. The part related to the cell seeding on the BioChip 4096E was conducted at the MBC: HT-29 cell line from colorectal cancer was used and the optimization of the protocols for ensuring adhesion and viability of cells on the electrodes area was performed. Once adhesion and proliferation of cells in the BioChip culture chamber were established, an apoptosis inducer (Etoposide) was added to the cell culture to analyse whether drug screening tests can be performed on a colorectal cancer cell line, used for the first time on this BioChip. By monitoring impedance evolution over time, cell adhesion, proliferation and death (as a result of the apoptosis inducer addition) were assessed. Data derived from the measure- ments were saved and analyzed in Matlab® R2018a. The results obtained show a dose-dependent cell death degree and demonstrate that imped- ance monitoring may be a real-time, label-free and non-invasive method for drug screening tests.