Alicia Méndez’s research while affiliated with University of La Laguna and other places

Amperometry is arguably the most widely used technique for studying the exocytosis of biological amines. However, the scarcity of human tissues, particularly in the context of neurological diseases, poses a challenge for exocytosis research. Human platelets, which accumulate 90% of blood serotonin, release it through exocytosis. Nevertheless, single-cell amperometry with encapsulated carbon fibers is impractical due to the small size of platelets and the limited number of secretory granules on each platelet. The recent technological improvements in amperometric multi-electrode array (MEA) devices allow simultaneous recordings from several high-performance electrodes. In this paper, we present a comparison of three MEA boron-doped diamond (BDD) devices for studying serotonin exocytosis in human platelets: (i) the BDD-on-glass MEA, (ii) the BDD-on-silicon MEA, and (iii) the BDD on amorphous quartz MEA (BDD-on-quartz MEA). Transparent electrodes offer several advantages for observing living cells, and in the case of platelets, they control activation/aggregation. BDD-on-quartz offers the advantage over previous materials of combining excellent electrochemical properties with transparency for microscopic observation. These devices are opening exciting perspectives for clinical applications.

Platelets are probably the most accessible human cells to study exocytosis by amperometry. These cell fragments accumulate biological amines, serotonin in particular, using similar if not the same mechanisms as those employed by sympathetic, serotoninergic, and histaminergic neurons. Thus, platelets have been widely recognized as a model system to study certain neurological and psychiatric diseases. Platelets release serotonin by exocytosis, a process that entails the fusion of a secretory vesicle to the plasma membrane and that can be monitored directly by classic single cell amperometry using carbon fiber electrodes. However, this is a tedious technique because any given platelet releases only 4–8 secretory d-granules. Here, we introduce and validate a diamond-based multielectrode array (MEA) device for the high-throughput study of exocytosis by human platelets. This is probably the first reported study of human tissue using an MEA, demonstrating that they are very interesting laboratory tools to assess alterations to exocytosis in neuropsychiatric diseases. Moreover, these devices constitute a valuable platform for the rapid testing of novel drugs that act on secretory pathways in human tissues.