Adult mouse sensory neurons on microelectrode arrays exhibit increased spontaneous and stimulus-evoked activity in the presence of interleukin-6.

Following inflammation or injury, sensory neurons located in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) may exhibit increased spontaneous and/or stimulus-evoked activity, contributing to chronic pain. Current treatment options for peripherally mediated chronic pain are highly limited, driving the development of cell- or tissue-based phenotypic (function-based) screening assays for peripheral analgesic and mechanistic lead discovery. Extant assays are often limited by throughput, content, use of tumorigenic cell lines, or tissue sources from immature developmental stages (i.e., embryonic or postnatal). Here, we describe a protocol for culturing adult mouse DRG neurons on substrate-integrated multiwell microelectrode arrays (MEAs). This approach enables multiplexed measurements of spontaneous as well as stimulus-evoked extracellular action potentials from large populations of cells. The DRG cultures exhibit stable spontaneous activity from 9 to 21 days in vitro. Activity is readily evoked by known chemical and physical agonists of sensory neuron activity such as capsaicin, bradykinin, PGE2, heat, and electrical field stimulation. Most importantly, we demonstrate that both spontaneous and stimulus-evoked activity may be potentiated by incubation with the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). Acute responsiveness to IL-6 is inhibited by treatment with a MAPK-interacting kinase 1/2 inhibitor, cercosporamide. In total, these findings suggest that adult mouse DRG neurons on multiwell MEAs are applicable to ongoing efforts to discover peripheral analgesic and their mechanisms of action. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This work describes methodologies for culturing spontaneously active adult mouse dorsal root ganglia (DRG) sensory neurons on microelectrode arrays. We characterize spontaneous and stimulus-evoked adult DRG activity over durations consistent with pharmacological interventions. Furthermore, persistent hyperexcitability could be induced by incubation with inflammatory cytokine IL-6 and attenuated with cercosporamide, an inhibitor of the IL-6 sensitization pathway. This constitutes a more physiologically relevant, moderate-throughput in vitro model for peripheral analgesic screening as well as mechanistic lead discovery.