Human neuronal networks on micro-electrode arrays are a highly robust tool to study disease-specific
Britt Mossink1, Anouk H A Verboven2, Eline J H van Hugte3
1Department of Human Genetics, Radboudumc, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior, 6500 HB Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, University of Twente, 7522 NB Enschede, the Netherlands.
Abstract:
Micro-electrode arrays (MEAs) are increasingly used to characterize neuronal network activity of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived neurons. Despite their gain in popularity, MEA recordings from hiPSC-derived neuronal networks are not always used to their full potential in respect to experimental design, execution, and data analysis. Therefore, we benchmarked the robustness of MEA-derived neuronal activity patterns from ten healthy individual control lines, and uncover comparable network phenotypes. To achieve standardization, we provide recommendations on experimental design and analysis. With such standardization, MEAs can be used as a reliable platform to distinguish (disease-specific) network phenotypes. In conclusion, we show that MEAs are a powerful and robust tool to uncover functional neuronal network phenotypes from hiPSC-derived neuronal networks, and provide an important resource to advance the hiPSC field toward the use of MEAs for disease phenotyping and drug discovery.
