Whole-cell impedance analysis for highly and poorly metastatic cancer cells

A micro electrical impedance spectroscopy (μEIS) system has been developed and implemented to analyze highly and poorly metastatic head and neck cancer (HNC) cell lines with single-cell resolution. The microsystem has arrays of 16 impedance analysis sites, each of which is capable of capturing a single cell and analyzing its whole-cell electrical impedance spectrum. This μEIS system was used to obtain the electrical impedance spectra of the poorly metastatic HNC cell line 686LN and the highly metastatic HNC cell line 686LN-M4e over a frequency range of 40 Hz-10 MHz. The 686LN cells had higher impedance phase compared to that of 686LN-M4e cells at frequencies between 50 kHz and 2 MHz. This result demonstrates that the metastatic state of HNC cells can be distinguished using the developed μEIS system. This system is expected to serve as a powerful tool for future detection and quantification of cancer cells from various tumor stages.