Abstract
Ion channels are cellular membrane proteins that act as specific signal transducers. They have crucial roles in physiology and pathophysiology and are important drug targets. Patch-clamp is the gold-standard for assessing ion channel function but does not have the potential to be automated and parallelized. This fact underlies current efforts in developing parallel patch-on-chip platforms in order to provide higher throughput and better reproducibility. Our approach is to develop a bio-electronic sandwich interface between microstructured substrates and printed circuits. ?Multi-patch? is a patch-on-a-chip device replacing patch pipettes by micrometersized holes and enabling multiple simultaneous single-cell electrical measurements. We present here a comparative approach of different substrates in view of the development of a chip-based device. We emphasize on the silicon technology pointing out its advantages in terms of microstructuration and development of an integrated electronics.