  Biological studies on in vitro cell cultures are of fundamental importance to
investigate cells response to external stimuli, such as new drugs for treatment
of specific pathologies, or to study communication between electrogenic cells.
Although three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures brought tremendous improvements
on biosensors used for various biological in vitro studies, including drug
delivery and electrical recording, there is still a lack of multifunctional
capabilities that could help gaining deeper insights in several bio-related
research fields. In this work, the electrical recording of large cell ensembles
and the intracellular delivery of few selected cells are combined on the same
device by integrating microfluidics channels on the bottom of a multi-electrode
array decorated with 3D hollow nanostructures. The novel platform allows to
record intracellular-like action potentials from large ensembles of
cardiomyocytes derived from human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hiPSC) and
from the HL-1 line, while different molecules are selectively delivered into
single/few targeted cells. The proposed approach shows high potential for
enabling new comprehensive studies that can relate drug effects to network
level cell communication processes.
