Impedance-based cellular assays for regenerative medicine

Therapies based on regenerative techniques have the potential to radically improve healthcare in the coming years. As a result, there is an emerging need for non-destructive and label-free technologies to assess the quality of engineered tissues and cell-based products prior to their use in the clinic. In parallel, the emerging regenerative medicine industry that aim to produce stem cells and their progeny on a large scale will benefit from moving away from existing destructive biochemical assays towards data-driven automation and control at the industrial scale.
Impedance-based cellular assays (IBCA) have emerged as an alternative approach to study stem cell properties and cumulative studies, reviewed here, showed their potential to monitor stem cell renewal, differentiation and maturation. They offer a novel method to non- destructively assess and quality control stem cell cultures. In addition, when combined with in vitro disease models they provide complementary insights as label-free phenotypic assays. IBCA provide quantitative and very sensitive results that can easily automated and upscaled in multi-well format. When facing the emerging challenge of real-time monitoring of 3D cell culture dielectric spectroscopy and electrical impedance tomography represent viable alternatives to 2D impedance sensing.