Efficacy and cardiotoxicity integrated assessment of anticancer drugs by a dual functional cell-based biosensor

Abstract Cancer significantly threatens human life, and the chemotherapy drugs are developed and widely used in the cancer treatment. However, the side effects of drugs on heart cause other serious problems. In this study, a dual functional cell-based biosensor integrating interdigitated electrodes (IDEs, monitoring cell viability) and microelectrodes (monitoring electrophysiology) is developed to comprehensively evaluate the efficacy and cardiotoxicity of anticancer drugs. Hela cells and cardiomyocytes of neonatal rats were cultured on this cell-based biosensor. Taxol (TAX) and vinblastine (VBL) were utilized to verify the performance of this platform. The efficacy of TAX and VBL were verified by comparing the results of traditional method and this method. As for cardiotoxicity, TAX showed little effect on cell viability, and slightly influenced the electrophysiological activity of cardiomyocytes at the range of 50–800 nM (with the sensitivity of -13.48%/lg TAX (nM) in field potential amplitude (FPA)) and 7.12%/lg TAX (nM) in firing rate (FR)). By contrast, VBL presented a relatively strong effect on both cell viability and electrophysiological activity of cardiomyocytes, which show a dose-dependent manner within a certain concentration range (with the sensitivity of -41.86%/lg VBL (nM) in FPA and -30.45%/lg VBL (nM) in FR). Owing to its simultaneously monitoring cell viability and electrophysiological activity of cells in a real-time and dynamic way, the dual functional cell-based biosensors will be a utility platform to evaluate the efficacy and cardiotoxicity of candidate compounds in new drug development.