Abstract: This invention focuses on the marriage of solid-state electronics and neuronal function to create a new high-throughput electrophysiological assay to determine a compound's acute and chronic effect on cellular function. Electronics, surface chemistry, biotechnology, and fundamental neuroscience are integrated to provide an assay where the reporter element is an array of electrically active cells. This innovative technology can be applied to neurotoxicity, and to screening compounds from combinatorial chemistry, gene function analysis, and basic neuroscience applications. The system of the invention analyzes how the action potential is interrupted by drugs or toxins. Differences in the action potentials are due to individual toxins acting on different biochemical pathways, which in turn affects different ion channels, thereby changing the peak shape of the action potential differently for each toxin.

Abstract: This invention focuses on the marriage of solid-state electronics and neuronal function to create a new high-throughput electrophysiological assay to determine a compound's acute and chronic effect on cellular function. Electronics, surface chemistry, biotechnology, and fundamental neuroscience are integrated to provide an assay where the reporter element is an array of electrically active cells. This innovative technology can be applied to neurotoxicity, and to screening compounds from combinatorial chemistry, gene function analysis, and basic neuroscience applications. The system of the invention analyzes how the action potential is interrupted by drugs or toxins. Differences in the action potentials are due to individual toxins acting on different biochemical pathways, which in turn affects different ion channels, thereby changing the peak shape of the action potential differently for each toxin.