Discussion

Development of iPSC technology has shown its great potential in disease modeling and drug
discovery, as well as in regenerative medicine, such as use of human cardiomyocytes and
neural cells for high-throughput screening assays. We recently developed a 96-channel
electrode array that is mounted on the FDSS/μCELL, a high-throughput-amenable kinetics
microplate reader for cell-based fluorescent and luminescent assays. It adds electric field
stimulation (EFS) to all 96 wells in a microplate simultaneously while fluorescent and
luminescent signals are monitored. In this study, we observed changes in intracellular Ca2+
concentrations in human iPSC-derived peripheral neurons by adding pulsed electric field
stimulations. We also monitored effect of the presence of a Ca2+ channel blocker on such EFStriggered
Ca2+ responses in the peripheral neurons.

Our developed 96-channel electrode array is used coupled with the FDSS/μCELL. The electric
field stimulations are given to all 96 wells in a microplate simultaneously by electrode array that
is positioned at the upper side over the microplate. The excitation light is introduced from the
bottom side, and fluorescence signals from cells are monitored with an EM-CCD camera.