Context Recently, intensive research has been done in the field of medical diagnostics to develop reliable analytical systems for the multidetection of molecules involved in cellular metabolism [1]. Microfluidic devices obtained by photolithographic and planar techniques are now widely used because of their numerous advantages and electrochemical miniaturized sensors are particularly adapted to biomedical applications [2]. These new biomedical tools are expected to allow accurate analysis of cells by mimicking in-vivo conditions. However, no cell-based devices integrating multiple electrochemical sensors for the real-time analysis of cell activity have been reported so far.

Objectives The objective is to develop a new cell-culture biochip that will be able to perform the multiple monitor-ing of essential nutrients such as dissolved oxygen and glucose during cell culture.

Methods The developed biochip was designed to simul-taneously perform the monitoring of O2 and glucose just before and after contact with the cell, which are directly inoculated in the cell chamber. These simultaneous measurements would therefore give precious information about cell activity during cell culture, especially during their growth and development. Main results have been achieved to optimize the perfor-mances of the integrated sensors during calibration and to validate the biocompatibility of the biochip for cell activity monitoring [3-4]. Studies on the multidetection in cell culture medium with the presence of liver cells (HepG2) are currently in progress Further experiments dedicated to the 2D/3D growth analysis of cells have also been achieved in different microenvironments and by using different cell chamber materi-als.

References and Publications[1] N. Li, A. Tourovskaia, and A. Folch, Crit., 2003, Rev. Biomed. Eng. (31) p.423-488[2] G.S. Wilson and R. Gifford, 2005, Bios. Bioelectron. 20, p.2388-2403[3] N. Pereira-Rodrigues, H. Kimura, Y. Sakai and T. Fujii, 2007, Proc. μTAS 2007, 1, p.152-154 [4] N. Pereira-Rodrigues, H. Kimura, Y. Sakai and T. Fujii, 2007, Proc.Transducers’07, 1, p.843-846

Microfluidic Biochip for the electrochemical cell activity analysisContact Researcher: Nazaré PEREIRA RODRIGUESHost Professor: T. FUJII Keywords: Biochip, Integrated sensors, PDMS microfluidic device, Cell activity

CELL

CHAMBER

O2

sensor

Au/Nafion ®

Glucose sensor

Au/ GOx /Nafion ®

PDMS microfluidic

chamberGlass

substrate

CELL

CHAMBER

O2

sensor

Au/Nafion ®

Glucose sensor

Au/ GOx /Nafion ®

PDMS microfluidic

chamberGlass

substrate

PDMS Microfluidc cell based Biochip

PDMS chamber

Hep -G2 Cells

PDMS chamber

Hep -G2 Cells

HepG2 cells cultured in the biochip

BioMEMS