3Brain

Overview

Dissociated cultures

Dissociated cultures grown on our high density Microelectrode Arrays are used to investigate fundamental properties of brain processing, to study the physiological and pathological functional activity of cultured models on primary or derived cell-lines, and for developing drug-screening or toxicological applications.

The high resolution technology of BioCAM X can foster your R&D on neuronal networks by enabling you to:

Track network activity and connectivity, like a standard imaging technique, but completely label-free. Show all videos
Improve the statistical significance of your network activity parameters. See more

200 ms spiking activity of hippocampal cell cultures (22 Days-In-Vitro).

Combine our electrode-based imaging with light-based imaging. See more
Investigate electrically-evoked network responses. See more videos

100 ms electrically-evoked activity of a dissociated hippocampal culture.

Bursting activity from a hippocampal culture. Top-left: false colour map of the burst recorded by the whole array (each pixel is an electrode). Bottom-left: zoom-in of the raw plot marked with a red dot in the main plot. Right: raw data plots of a sub-selection of 256 electrodes among the 4096 available.

Disease in a dish & drug discovery

Our high density Multielectrode Array is the ideal tool in pre-clinical toxicological/pharmacological screenings to assess in vitro models of severe long term neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Thanks to the high number of recording sites, functional alteration caused by insulting agents, such as Aβ oligomers, or the rescue effects of neuroprotective compounds, can be evaluated in label-free assays with unprecedented statistical significance and with a sensitivity superior to most common cellular death assays or imaging techniques as demonstrated for instance in Amin et al., Sci Reports 2017.

Sensitivity of high density Multielectrode Array at low dose concentration of Aβ oligomers. Top: comparison of the functional activity maps generated with HD-MEA of an untreated vs. treated culture over 26 hours. Bottom-left: % variation of the mean firing rate measured with HD-MEA not induced by cellular death as shown in the MTT assay (bottom-right). Interestingly the HD-MEA is sensible to low dose concentrations whose effects are not visible on MTT assays. Adapted from Amin et al., Scientific Reports 2017. See more

An in vitro model of Alzheimer's Disease developed with high density Multielectrode Array for evaluating rescue effects of neuro-protective compounds. Administration of memantine or saffron at different time points (left co-administered with Aβ oligomers, right after 26 hours) leads to completely different results. Adapted from Amin et al., Scientific Reports 2017. See more

Human-derived stem cells

Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neuronal networks are the most promising tools to improve understanding of brain disease by in-vitro modelling. Our high density Multielectrode Arrays are the first CMOS-based devices fully validated with human-derived neurons. Spontaneous, as well as electrically-evoked, activity has been monitored for more than three months over different adhesion coatings. See more

Variation of the firing activity of human iPS-derived neuronal networks recorded by HD-MEA coated with different adhesion factors. Adapted from Amin et al., Front. Neurosci. 2016.

Reconstruction of the structural links (red lines) of a neuronal culture grown on an HD-MEA. Courtesy of IIT

Connectivity studies

Functional connectivity in neuronal assemblies is a hot topic for neuroscientists. Our high density Microelectrode Array (HD-MEA) allows fine studies of interconnected networks. See more

Combined with optical imaging, it provides a powerful tool to investigate the relationship between function and structure in cultures. See more

Cardiac cells