A Light-Addressable Potentiometric Sensor System for Fast, Simultaneous and Spatial Detection of the Metabolic Activity of Biological Cells

The metabolic activity of cells can be utilised to indicate the general reaction of them towards the cell environment. Hence, the influence of a specific reagent (e.g., drugs, toxins, growth factors, etc.) in the cell-culture medium can be determined by recording the metabolic activity. The light-addressable potentiometric sensor (LAPS), a field-effect-based chemical sensor, provides a promising technology platform to record the metabolic activity of cells with a spatial resolution. In this work, a portable LAPS device will be introduced which is capable of measuring at 16 different locations within the sensor surface simultaneously. The cultivation and recording of the metabolic activity of CHO (Chinese hamster ovary) cells within the LAPS set-up will be demonstrated.