Impedance Monitoring of SH-SY5Y Cell Adhesion and Responses to As₂O₃ Treatment by Indium Tin Oxide Microelectrode Arrays

For most of the cells, cell adhesion is one of the essential factors for cell growth in vitro. In this paper, the impedance was used to monitor SH-SY5Y cell adhesion and evaluate the responses to As₂O₃ in a real-time, noninvasive, and label-free manner with indium tin oxide microelectrode arrays. Due to the transparency of the electrodes, cell activities can be observed simultaneously when impedance monitoring proceeded. The results indicated that the impedance responses had a good correlation with microscopic analysis of cell activities. Moreover, As₂O₃ at different concentrations were added for the evaluation of its effect on cell adhesion. 40μ mol/L As₂O₃ could detach almost all of the cells from the microelectrode surface, leading to an obvious decrease in impedance responses and declined cell survival rate after 9 h of treatment. Importantly, the impedance monitoring can provide the information about cell adhesion changes much earlier than commonly used cell microphotographs determination. This paper indicated the convenience and sensitivity of impedance for the direct and real-time monitoring of cell behaviors and drug-induced cell activities in vitro. It may be a driving force for the study of As₂O₃ effect on neuroblastoma and provides a useful and non-invasive analytical approach for cancer research.