Our CSO of Cell Electrophysiology Bob Petroski and Chris Petroski, Research assistant in our Cell Electrophysiology facility of San Diego, attended from May 15 to 17 MaxWell Biosystems‘ 3rd in vitro 2D&3D Neuronal Networks Summit in Zurich.
It was a great opportunity for them to share Neuroservices-Alliance’s expertise in using MaxTwo HD-MEA for recording of primary rat neuron cultures and human iPSC-derived neuron cultures.
On top of sharing our global expertise, Bob Petroski presented the poster “High density MEA recording of primary rat neuron cultures and human iPSC-derived neuron cultures growing at low density on astrocyte feeder layers” (prepared by Christian Petroski, Chen Tian and Robert Petroski).
Background
Primary rodent neuronal cell cultures are used for both mechanism of action studies and validation of gene targets expressed in their native environment. Drug discovery projects rely on primary rodent neuronal cell cultures to interrogate the efficacy and potency of novel therapeutic molecules. Functional electrophysiological properties of neurons are measured by patch clamp recording. Neurons growing at low density on a monolayer of astrocytes are an ideal model system for developing the mature neuronal phenotype in vitro.
Astrocytes provide the optimum substrate for neuronal survival and differentiation. Neurons express a full repertoire of voltage-gated and ligand-gated ion channels as well as GPCRs that modulate neuronal excitability. Both intrinsic and synaptic excitability can be recorded in these cultures. However, the data throughput of patch clamp recording is limited to 1 or 2 neurons at a time. High density microelectrode arrays (MEAs) from MaxWell promise to greatly increase the data throughput of functional endpoints to 100s to 1,000s of neurons at a time.
Conventionally, MEA data has been generated from neuronal cultures plated at very high density (2,000-3,000 cells/mm2). We present MEA data recorded from low density rat cortical neuron cultures (25-100 cells/mm2) plated on astrocytes. These cultures conditions more closely resemble the conditions used for patch clamp recording. Neuronal activity (number of active electrodes, firing rate, bursting) increase with development time in vitro. In addition, we also present data from human iPSC derived NGN2 neurons at low density on a substrate of rat astrocytes.
