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We investigated the combined effect of the initial cell density (12 500, 35 000, 75 000, and 100 000 cells cm−2) and concentration of the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin on HeLa cells by performing time-dependent cytotoxicity assays using real-time electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. A correlation between the rate of cell death and the initial cell seeding density was found at 2.5 μM doxorubicin concentration, whereas this was not observed at 5 or 100 μM. By sensing the changes in the cell–substrate interaction using impedance spectroscopy under static conditions, the onset of cytotoxicity was observed 5 h earlier than when using a standard colorimetric end-point assay (MTS) which measures changes in the mitochondrial metabolism. Furthermore, with the MTS assay no cytotoxicity was observed after 15 h of incubation with 2.5 μM doxorubicin, whereas the impedance showed at this time point cell viability that was below 25%. These results indicate that impedance detection reveals cytotoxic events undetectable when using the MTS assay, highlighting the importance of combining impedance detection with traditional drug toxicity assays towards a more in depth understanding of the effect of anti-cancer drugs on in vitro assays. Moreover, the detection of doxorubicin induced toxicity determined with impedance under static conditions proved to be 6 times faster than in perfusion culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A surface modification of interdigitated gold microelectrodes (IDEs) with a doped polypyrrole (PPy) film for detection of dopamine released from populations of differentiated PC12 cells is presented. A thin PPy layer was potentiostatically electropolymerized from an aqueous pyrrole solution onto electrode surfaces. The conducting polymer film was doped during electropolymerization by introducing counter-ions in the monomer solution. Several counter-ions were tested and the resulting electrode modifications were characterized electrochemically to find the optimal dopant that increases sensitivity in dopamine detection. Overoxidation of the PPy films was shown to contribute to a significant enhancement in sensitivity to dopamine. The changes caused by overoxidation in the electrochemical behavior and electrode morphology were investigated using cyclic voltammetry and SEM as well as AFM, respectively. The optimal dopant for dopamine detection was found to be polystyrene sulfonate anion (PSS(-)). Rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells, a suitable model to study exocytotic dopamine release, were differentiated on IDEs functionalized with an overoxidized PSS(-)-doped PPy film. The modified electrodes were used to amperometrically detect dopamine released by populations of cells upon triggering cellular exocytosis with an elevated K(+) concentration. A comparison between the generated current on bare gold electrodes and gold electrodes modified with overoxidized doped PPy illustrates the clear advantage of the modification, yielding 2.6-fold signal amplification. The results also illustrate how to use cell population based dopamine exocytosis measurements to obtain biologically significant information that can be relevant in, for instance, the study of neural stem cell differentiation into dopaminergic neurons.