Probing the Adhesion and Viability of Individual Cells with Field-Effect Transistors

We describe a novel method for the non-invasive, electronic monitoring of the cell-substrate adhesion. We utilize open-gate field-effect transistor (FET) chips for our adhesion measurements. These chips were developed, fabricated, and previously used for the extracellular recording from electrogenic cells. We developed a miniaturized and portable 16-channel amplifier system, which monitors the electronic transfer function of the FETs. We present cellular adhesion measurements of HEK 293 cells on an individual cell level. The system can additionally be used to probe the viability of individual cells.