Microelectronic Cellular Vitality Monitoring

One of the goals of animal cell technology is to replace animal experiments by appropriate in-vitro technologies. Many methods of analysing cellular parameters are end-point determinations. The advantage of the introduced system, however, is that monitoring cell culture is non- invasive and can also provide kinetic information on changes in cellular metabolism and morphology. With this motivation, the research group from the Heinz Nixdorf-Department for Medical Electronics of the Technical University of Munich has developed a microelectronic (cellular vitality) monitoring system for multiparametric measurement of cell metabolism (Wolf et al., 1998). Extracellular acidification and oxygen consumption by the cells can be directly monitored over several days (Brischwein et al., 2003). The basis of this system is a small sensor chip made of low cost materials combined with highly integrated and sensitive measurement electronics.