A frugal printed electrochemical architecture to monitor dopamine release in mice brain: Organ-on-screen-printed approach

Dopamine (DA) is an important catecholamine neuromodulator that is present in the brain of mammal, and changes of its level can be related to some neurological diseases such as Parkinson, Huntington and Alzheimer. As a consequence, rapid, cost-effective and sensitive approaches are required to monitor the dopamine changes, especially in the brain. In this paper, we report the development of a frugal electrochemical platform for the development of an affordable organ-on-screen-printed strip to monitor the dopamine release from mice's brain. Coupling diagnostics, engineering and neuroscience, a flexible screen-printed platform has been applied to the determination of dopamine release from brain slice finely anchored onto the working area of the platform. After the experimental condition were optimized both in standard and PC-12 cell culture media, with a detection limit of ca. 1 μM and a linear range up to 160 μM (with a relative standard deviation of 9%), the platform was tested toward different areas of the brain, namely striatum and cerebellum. The printed strip was capable to monitor the release of dopamine following the stimulation with potassium chloride drop, highlighting the difference amount of dopamine in these areas. This work demonstrates how affordable facilities may produce frugal innovation to be used for low-cost organ-on-chip platforms.