Novel processing for a polymer patch clamping system

Patch clamping remains the gold standard in electrical (ion channel) measurements of cells and is used in basic research and drug screening. Major drawbacks of the method are that is it slow and cumbersome - much effort has been put into producing high throughput systems (HTS). HTS currently marketed remain on the traditional materials of glass and silicon with one polymer based system. All of these systems use suction or pressure to move cells to a planar hole for measurement, circumventing the need for a glass pipette, a significant advantage over the traditional method. However, using suction has other limitations, cells must be suspendable in solution and non-aggregating and success rates using suction are extremely variable - ranging from 30 - 80% depending on cell type. Cells that are not positioned well over a measurement hole do not provide a high enough resistance seal for measurement (i.e. there is a ¿leak¿ between the measurement electrode below the cell and the bath reference electrode above the cell). To have the cells `self-guide´ and culture above the measurement hole would advance HTS systems and also allow the measurement of cells that are not currently possible. We present a novel patch clamping design (Fig. 1) for single cells and cell networks that exploits the surface modification capability of polymers to provide preferential attractive binding sites for cells that do not require suction for placement. This paper introduces the processes used to develop such a system and provides initial results.