Monitoring of Cell Layer Integrity with a Current‐Driven Organic Electrochemical Transistor

Abstract

The integrity of CaCo‐2 cell barriers is investigated by organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) in a current‐driven configuration. Ion transport through cellular barriers via the paracellular pathway is modulated by tight junctions between adjacent cells. Rupturing its integrity by H2O2 is monitored by the change of the output voltage in the transfer characteristics. It is demonstrated that by operating the OECT in a current‐driven configuration, the sensitive and temporal resolution for monitoring the cell barrier integrity is strongly enhanced as compared to the OECT transient response measurement. As a result, current‐driven OECTs are useful tools to assess dynamic and critical changes in tight junctions, relevant for clinical applications as drug targeting and screening.

Monitoring Reversible Tight Junction Modulation with a Current‐Driven Organic Electrochemical Transistor

“…Caco-2 Cell Exposure to PLL in Transwell Filter: Experiments were performed on day 14 after seeding, corresponding to a TER of ≈400 Ω cm 2 . [45,40] The TER was measured with a handheld Volt-Ohm meter EVOM2 from World Precision Instruments. Before adding polyl-lysine (PLL) in DI water (0,56 × 10 −6 m, M W = 30-70 kDa, Sigma Aldrich) apical to the cell layer, the same volume of electrolyte was removed before to keep the ionic concentration similar.…”

“…An investigation on irreversible barrier tissue disruption with hydrogen peroxide using a current‐driven OECT confirmed the improved ion sensitivity compared to transient response measurements. [ 40 ] Therefore, a current‐driven OECT is an attractive alternative to electrically monitor in real‐time the reversible opening and closing of TJs, which is of great importance for drug delivery.…”

Highly Stable Contact Doping in Organic Field Effect Transistors by Dopant‐Blockade Method

“…Developing high‐performance organic field effect transistors (OFETs) has been a bottleneck in exploiting the merits of organic semiconductors (OSCs) such as solution‐processability, mechanical flexibility, and bio‐compatibility, for realizing practical organic optoelectronic device applications. [ 1–14 ] One of the main challenges remaining for utilizing OFETs is a high contact resistance originating from an injection barrier at the OSC–metal interface. [ 1–14 ] An inefficient charge injection across such non‐ohmic contacts not only lowers the effective mobility of OFETs but limits the range of operation voltage due to a highly non‐linear (S‐shaped) output characteristic curve at low bias voltage, [ 15,16 ] which is not desirable for analog circuit applications.…”

Multiscale real time and high sensitivity ion detection with complementary organic electrochemical transistors amplifier

“…To improve the sensitivity, we recently proposed a current-driven OECT architecture, achieving selective K + sensitivity up to 414 10 −3 V dec −1 over an ion concentration range 10 −2 M − 1 M at a supply voltage equal to 0.8 V 26 . However, although sensitive this approach requires a read-out scheme not ideally suitable for real-time ion sensing 27 . Therefore, while OECTs are a promising technology for ion detection and real-time monitoring, current approaches still require additional electronic circuits for signal amplification because of the limited sensitivity.…”