Bioimpedance Technique Application to Determine Cellular Damage Consistent with Pore Forming Cell Cytotoxicity

Abstract

Bioimpedance is a passive electrical property of biological tissues and here we propose that it can be applied to assess damaging cellular changes. This study applies bioimpedance techniques to detect cellular alterations consistent with the cytotoxicity induced by the pore forming toxin Vibrio cholerae cytolysin (VCC). In this study, electrical impedance properties of tissue cultures were measured before and after VCC toxin exposure, using Electrical Bioimpedance Spectroscopy (EBiS) across a frequency of 100 Hz to 1MHz. The results strongly suggest that impedance of the cells treated with the VCC, decrease in comparison with healthy cells, indicating the loss of cellular integrity induced by the toxin. The importance of this study is that it supports that bioimpedance can be applied as a non-invasive method for monitoring cellular physiological conditions, detecting in this case, the toxin-induced cellular damage. More studies can be done to develop impedance-based devices, useful for the early noninvasive detection of cellular damage, such as those derived from various experimental challenging situations. Devices developed under these evidences, may also be applied in clinical detection of cell damage in patients.