In a recent study at the INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier (Laval, Quebec, Canada) the E-Plate Insert had been used to test the behaviour of BeWo human placental choriocarcinoma cells in co-culture with H295R human adrenocortical carcinoma cells. "Using the E-Plate Insert in our co-culture experiments requires fewer manipulations and allows us to perform several experiments simultaneously - hormone measurements, signalling pathway analysis, real-time monitoring of biochemical and morphological differentiation of the cells," summarized Prof. Thomas Sanderson and Prof. Cathy Vaillancourt, who are co-investigators on this project and co-supervisors of Andrée-Anne Hudon Thibeault, the Masters student who realised the study. The Canadian group plans to use the unique abilities of the co-culture-compatible E-Plate Insert and xCELLigence cell response monitoring technology, to determine the effect of co-culture on primary villous trophoblast homeostasis (polarization, differentiation/syncytialization, fusion, apoptosis) and on H295R cells (proliferation, viability, apoptosis) as well as expression and activity levels of key placental and fetal adrenal steroidogenic enzymes.
The membrane-containing E-Plate Inserts enable sensitive, reproducible measurement of indirect cell-to-cell interactions in real-time, and in a label-free environment using the xCELLigence Instruments (RTCA DP, SP, and MP Analyzers). Combined with microscopy-compatible E-Plates VIEW, E-Plate Inserts 16 and 96 are available for low to high throughput applications. Impedance-based measurements are particularly advantageous when co-culturing cells for pinpointing when and how cells respond to each other, thus identifying the best time points for further experiments.