A Conductive Hydrogel-Paper Sensor for Cell Metabolism Monitoring

Cell culture represents a pivotal experimental technique in the realm of life sciences, being widely employed as a fundamental research operation. Monitoring alterations in medium composition during cell growth is crucial for gaining a comprehensive understanding of cellular dynamics and enables researchers to promptly adjust the medium to prevent the cells from being subjected to suboptimal growth conditions or potential cell death. However, the existing cell culture models heavily rely on researcher experience and lack an objective and visually accessible means of assessing the cellular metabolic environment. To address this gap, we present a novel paper-based sensor fabricated using an ultra-high conductive hydrogel material. This innovative sensor offers an objective, accurate, and visualizable approach for real-time monitoring of metabolic environment changes during cell culture, thereby providing a valuable tool for comprehensive assessment of the cellular metabolic state.