Real time monitoring of copper-ions-induced cytotoxicity by EIS cell chips

An important goal of biomedical research is the development of tools for high throughput evaluation of drug effects and cytotoxicity tests. In this respect, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is an emerging technique for on-chip cell-based assays. For cell layers, RET (electron transfer resistence) and C (capacitance) are correlated to cell viability, adhesion and cytoskeleton organization and this approach has been successfully exploited to gain real-time information on cell behaviour. Here, for the first time, impedance based biochips in combination with complementary methodologies (including state-of-the-art AFM, viability test and western blot) are employed to perform a complete characterization of cell morphology and changes induced by copper ions on two cell lines (B104 and HeLa cells). Our results reveal a strong correlation between EIS data and both MTT test and AFM characterization. As a consequence, we expect that such on-chip assays can replace in vitro drug tests based on conventional biochemical methods, being very cheap and reusable and allowing to perform cytotoxicity tests without using any expensive reagent or equipment.