Towards the Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing (ECIS) Technique as a Monitor of Effects in Magnetic Field Exposure Experiments In Vitro

Abstract

The Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing (ECIS) technique has been know since the 1980’s, and it is based on the measurement of the electrical impedance spectroscopy of a cellular culture in vitro grown as a confluent monolayer of cells over planar gold electrodes photolithographed on a glass substrate. Perhaps the main advantage of the method over biochemical ones, is that it allows for realtime monitoring of cell adhesion changes, for instance, as the cells are exposed to some external agent. In this work we present our progress in putting together a low cost ECIS system for monitoring changes upon the exposure of a cell culture to low-frequency magnetic fields; we report on many technical details and difficulties that we found along the way; and we discuss the results of our first test of the system with actual cell cultures. Future work is discussed.