Cell number and viability matter from biological research to bioprocessing. So, scientists keep working on better ways to monitor these features of cell cultures. One promising approach comes from Juul Goossens, a PhD researcher at Hasselt University in Belgium, who has been working on a multi-sensor for monitoring cells.
Many methods exist to measure cell viability. You can stain a sample of cells with trypan blue, which passes through the damaged membrane of dead cells and stains the nucleus. This method is easy enough and accurate, but it’s time-consuming, only provides a one-time measurement, and usually destroys the sample. So, scientists developed electrochemical techniques, such as impedance flow cytometry (IFC), which can count cells and analyze various properties without any staining. However, this technique also only provides one measurement in time, destroys the sample, and doesn’t fit in high-throughput settings.
So, Goossens took a different approach. In 2022, he and his colleagues described a method that combines two types of sensors: thermal and impedance. Then, in the May 2025 issue of Talanta from Elsevier, Goossen and his colleagues described tests of this multi-sensor’s performance on tracking the health of yeast cells in multi-well plates.
Like a Belgian bread baker, Goossen’s team started with Bruggeman instant yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). From that, they made a collection of cultures with a range of cell numbers and analyzed them with their thermal-impedance sensor. Although the sensor’s signal increased with cell number, producing a curved line when graphing sensor magnitude versus cell number, the sensor’s value also increased in samples with more live cells. Nonetheless, the slope of the graphed line at different values of the cell count “is linearly correlated with the number of cells,” the scientists showed.
When plotting the sensor output versus the percentage of live cells, Goossen and his colleagues found that “the change in magnitude and slope can be linearly correlated with the cell viability state.”
From this data, the scientists developed multivariate-regression models that can predict the number of cells and the percentage of viable cells in multi-well plates. The models, though, produced root-mean-square errors of 0.106 ×107 cells for counts and 19.67% for viability. Still, Goossen and his colleagues reported: “Despite the relatively large error in general, it can still make some good estimations.”
Although this multi-sensor is far from perfect, it offers some key benefits. It doesn’t require treating the cells with a stain, it continuously collects data in real time, and it doesn’t damage the samples. With more time, this sensor could work even better. As Goossen’s team put it: “To further improve the current setup, different sensing fabrication methods could allow for a higher sensing resolution, enabling a higher signal-to-noise ratio, improving the accuracy.”
The post Multi-Sensor Monitoring of Cell Number and Viability appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
Many methods exist to measure cell viability. You can stain a sample of cells with trypan blue, which passes through the damaged membrane of dead cells and stains the nucleus. This method is easy enough and accurate, but it’s time-consuming, only provides a one-time measurement, and usually destroys the sample. So, scientists developed electrochemical techniques, such as impedance flow cytometry (IFC), which can count cells and analyze various properties without any staining. However, this technique also only provides one measurement in time, destroys the sample, and doesn’t fit in high-throughput settings.
So, Goossens took a different approach. In 2022, he and his colleagues described a method that combines two types of sensors: thermal and impedance. Then, in the May 2025 issue of Talanta from Elsevier, Goossen and his colleagues described tests of this multi-sensor’s performance on tracking the health of yeast cells in multi-well plates.
Like a Belgian bread baker, Goossen’s team started with Bruggeman instant yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). From that, they made a collection of cultures with a range of cell numbers and analyzed them with their thermal-impedance sensor. Although the sensor’s signal increased with cell number, producing a curved line when graphing sensor magnitude versus cell number, the sensor’s value also increased in samples with more live cells. Nonetheless, the slope of the graphed line at different values of the cell count “is linearly correlated with the number of cells,” the scientists showed.
When plotting the sensor output versus the percentage of live cells, Goossen and his colleagues found that “the change in magnitude and slope can be linearly correlated with the cell viability state.”
From this data, the scientists developed multivariate-regression models that can predict the number of cells and the percentage of viable cells in multi-well plates. The models, though, produced root-mean-square errors of 0.106 ×107 cells for counts and 19.67% for viability. Still, Goossen and his colleagues reported: “Despite the relatively large error in general, it can still make some good estimations.”
Although this multi-sensor is far from perfect, it offers some key benefits. It doesn’t require treating the cells with a stain, it continuously collects data in real time, and it doesn’t damage the samples. With more time, this sensor could work even better. As Goossen’s team put it: “To further improve the current setup, different sensing fabrication methods could allow for a higher sensing resolution, enabling a higher signal-to-noise ratio, improving the accuracy.”
The post Multi-Sensor Monitoring of Cell Number and Viability appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.