Abstract

Drug-induced seizure liabilities are typically tested in
expensive and low throughput ex vivo rat hippocampal brain slices. An in vitro
model based on micro-electrode arrays using human iPSC derived neurons has been
suggested. There is a surge of interest in higher throughput methods, one of
them being fluorescence measurement of calcium oscillations in neuronal
cultures. However, progress has been limited by the long imaging acquisition
time for an entire 96-or 384-well plate, and also by the heterogeneity of
neurons derived from human iPSCs. With the development of new camera
technologies as well as availability of highly enriched, functionally mature
human neurons derived from iPSCs, these limitations can now be overcome. Here,
we attempt to build a model to compare human iPSC derived neurons and
astrocyte, with rat primary cells upon treatment of reference and control
compounds using a camera-based Kinetic plate reader, FDSS (Hamamatsu).