Endothelial Cell Hydrogel Based Biosensor

Recent studies have shown that solid state, optically thin, electrically conductive biosensors have the potential to quantify live cell-drug interactions. These sensors have many potential applications in pharmaceutical testing, cytotoxicity screening, personalized medicine, and many other research areas. The materials used to fabricate these novel sensors, however, do not necessarily promote the long term cellular attachment and growth for studies over several days to weeks. The objective of this study is, therefore, to improve the long term cellular attachment to these sensors using synthetic hydrogel coatings. The choice of charged and neutral monomers is carefully examined to produce long term cellular attachment on optically thin electro-conductive biosensors without impeding the biosensor performance. A combination of cellular attachment studies on different hydrogels, swelling measurements, and electrically conductive measurements are examined to determine the optimal hydrogel composition. The results of this study show that copolymerizing 2-hydroxyethylmethacylate and polyethylene glycol dimethacrylate with acidic and basic monomers has the potential to significantly improve the long term performance of solid state optically thin, electrically conductive cellular biosensors.