Georgia Institute of Technology engineers have built a multi-modality cellular sensor. Arranged in a standard CMOS process, each sensor pixel concurrently monitors multiple different physiological parameters of the same cell and tissue samples.
To ensure biocompatibility and electrical insulation, the technology's printed circuit board (PCB) is packaged using a low-cost polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material. A standard 35-mm cell culture dish with drilled-out bottom is mounted on the PCB to host the cells and medium, and expose cells to the CMOS sensing surface.
The research will improve semiconductors being used in the development of health care applications, including the more cost-effective development of pharmaceuticals, point-of-care devices, and low-cost home-based diagnostics and drug testing systems.
In the early phases of drug development, in vitro cultured cells and tissues are widely used to identify and quantify the efficacy and potency of drug candidates; cellular physiology responses are recorded. The new sensing platform performs fast, parallel screening of in vitro cells and tissues so that the promising chemical candidates can be selected efficiently.
The CMOS sensor array chips provide built-in computation circuits for in-situ signal processing and sensor fusion on multi-modality sensor data. The chips also eliminate the need of external electronic equipment and allow their use in general biology labs without dedicated electronic or optical setups.
