Near real-time electrochemical analysis of carcinogenic cell lines using planar microelectrodes

Physical manipulation of polarizable particles generated by the transient force when placed in non-uniform electrical fields is termed dielectrophoresis. The electrophysiological make-up of the particle and the surrounding medium decides the magnitude of the force; hence specific DEP profile may be acquired for any polarizable particles based on the electrical properties of the membrane and cytoplasm alone. Any changes to these parameters may be detected, in turn, by observing the corresponding DEP spectra. The reason DEP is not applied widely in spite of its non-invasiveness primarily is that the process is time consuming. The proposed DEP-based lab-on-chip application of semi-automated cell electrophysiology characterization allowed concurrent DEP experiments to be conducted serially, which significantly reduced the required experiment time. This capability is achieved via the employment of a planar microelectrode with modified dot microarray geometry. The results showed that the system is capable of producing a complete DEP spectrum profile for K562 leukemic cells between the 1kHz to 1MHz frequency range in less than 10 minutes. © 2012 by ESG