Summary: Human cerebral organoids—tiny, lab-grown clusters of brain tissue—are the frontier for studying disorders like Angelman syndrome. However, research has been bottlenecked by the high cost of sensors, often limiting studies to fewer than 10 samples. Researchers have shattered this barrier with CAMEO (Conformal Array for Monitoring Electrophysiology of Organoids).
This low-cost, “basket-like” sensor uses carbon nanotubes to cradle organoids and record delicate electrical signals. By making these sensors affordable and scalable, the team has paved the way for large-scale studies that could finally decode the complexities of the developing human brain.
Key Facts
- The CAMEO Design: The device features 12 flexible carbon nanotube strands suspended in a basket shape. The organoid sits inside like an egg, with the nanotube ends acting as electrodes.
- Breaking the Cost Barrier: Current sensors are so expensive they create “financial constraints” for labs. CAMEO uses inexpensive materials and a simplified manufacturing process to allow for “plug-and-play” mass testing.
- Sensitivity to “Low-Amplitude” Signals: Despite being low-cost, CAMEO’s performance matches expensive industry standards, successfully detecting the subtle electrical whispers critical for neurodevelopmental research.
- Angelman Syndrome Insights: Because animal models fail to capture human brain complexity, these mass-scale organoid arrays are essential for testing therapies for genetic disorders that affect speech and movement.
- Standardized Sharing: The researchers hope CAMEO becomes a universal standard, allowing labs worldwide to easily share and compare data using the same affordable hardware.
Source: North Carolina State University
Researchers have demonstrated a new class of low-cost, scalable sensors that can be used to monitor electrical activity in human cerebral organoids. Because electrical signals are key to understanding brain function, this advance facilitates research into both neurodevelopment and genetic disorders such as Angelman syndrome.
Human cerebral organoids are millimeter-sized tissues comprised of cell types typically found in the different regions of the brain. They are made by culturing stem cells. These organoids are important to many fields of research because they allow researchers to study the behavior of nervous system cells and tissues in ways that are not possible with animal models.
For example, Angelman syndrome is a genetic disorder associated with delayed development, intellectual disability, speech impairment and problems with movement. Because researchers cannot conduct research on a human’s developing brain, human cerebral organoids are a valuable platform for understanding the genetic activity that causes the disorder and developing therapeutic treatments.
“Animal models don’t really capture the complexity of the human brain, which is one reason why human cerebral organoids are attractive for brain research,” says Amay Bandodkar, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University.
“One challenge with human cerebral organoid research is that there can be significant variation across organoid samples,” says Navya Mishra, first author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. “As a result, it’s important to have a lot of samples in order to produce biologically meaningful results.
“However, the sensors currently used in organoid research are expensive, due to both the materials they are made from and the manufacturing process itself,” says Mishra. “This creates financial constraints that result in researchers often using fewer than 10 organoids for a given study.”
“Our goal with this work was to develop a sensor that performs well, can be scaled up in an affordable way, and that is easy to use,” says Albert Keung, co-corresponding author of the paper on the work and an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University.
To address these challenges, the researchers developed a device they call CAMEO – Conformal Array for Monitoring Electrophysiology of Organoids. The device consists of 12 carbon nanotube strands suspended in the shape of a basket.
The carbon nanotubes are processed in a way that preserves the material’s flexibility and sensitivity to electrical signals. In practice, the organoid is suspended in the CAMEO, like an egg in a basket. The end of each strand is exposed, creating an electrode that can detect electrical signals from the organoid. The signals are then transmitted through the carbon nanotube strand to a device that can record electrical activity.
In proof-of-concept testing, the researchers demonstrated that CAMEO was capable of monitoring electrical activity in organoids, that it could detect the low-amplitude signals that are critical to biological research, and that it was able to detect signal changes that are triggered by chemicals that stimulate electrical activity in neurological systems.
“This work was very interdisciplinary and really benefited from Navya’s adventurousness to integrate principles from electrical engineering and neurodevelopmental biology,” says Keung.
“We have shown that CAMEO’s performance is comparable to previous technologies used to monitor electrical activity in organoids,” says Mishra. “The big difference is that our microelectrode array uses relatively inexpensive materials and is much less difficult to manufacture, making it substantially less costly. This should make it much easier to scale up, allowing researchers to conduct more large-scale studies.
“Hopefully, many labs will adopt CAMEO, because having a standardized data-collection format will make it much easier for the research community to share data effectively – because they’ll be using the same plug-and-play system,” says Mishra.
Funding: This work was done with support from the Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics under grant FT2022-02, and from the National Science Foundation under grant 2025064.
Mishra, Keung and Bandodkar have filed a disclosure to protect the intellectual property pertaining to the CAMEO technology.
Key Questions Answered:
A: Mice are great, but their brains don’t develop like ours. For genetic conditions like Angelman syndrome, which affects human-specific traits like speech and complex cognition, animal models often miss the mark. Organoids are made from human stem cells, providing a much more accurate “biological twin” for testing new drugs.
A: Traditional sensors are often flat or rigid, making it hard to get a good “read” on a 3D ball of tissue. The CAMEO basket conforms to the organoid’s shape, ensuring the 12 electrodes stay in constant, gentle contact with the tissue. It’s like the difference between laying a ball on a table versus holding it in your palm.
A: Indirectly, yes. One of the biggest costs in drug development is failure. By allowing scientists to test 100 organoids instead of 10, they get “biologically meaningful” results much faster. This higher statistical power helps identify successful treatments earlier in the research cycle.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this neurotech research news
Author: Matt Shipman
Source: North Carolina State University
Contact: Matt Shipman – North Carolina State University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Carbon Nanotube Microelectrode Arrays Enable Scalable and Accessible Electrophysiological Recordings of Cerebral Organoids” by Navya Mishra, Rajaram Kaveti, Pei Liu, Baha Erim Uzunoglu, Aram Mirabedini, Anna Tran, Z. Begum Yagci, Tyler Johnson, Parvez Ahmmed, Qiuli Wang, Jeong Yong Kim, Paris Brown, Surjendu Maity, Shyni Varghese, Michael D. Dickey, Yong Zhu, Alper Bozkurt, Raudel Avila, Albert J. Keung & Amay J. Bandodkar. npj Biosensing
DOI:10.1038/s44328-026-00088-9
Abstract
Carbon Nanotube Microelectrode Arrays Enable Scalable and Accessible Electrophysiological Recordings of Cerebral Organoids
Human cerebral organoids hold promise for studying neurodevelopment, modelling disease, and drug screening. Electrophysiology is a key functional property for these studies; yet, performing high-throughput electrophysiological studies with organoids remains a critical bottleneck.
Current state-of-the-art recording technologies, including 2D and 3D microelectrode arrays (MEAs), are low-throughput, expensive to fabricate and purchase, and often incompatible with routine organoid culture.
These limitations restrict their adoption, and many studies report electrophysiological activity from insufficient sample sizes to accurately capture the widely accepted biological variability inherent to organoid models.
Here, we present a scalable, low-cost, plug-and-play platform that integrates a new class of carbon nanotube-based 3D microelectrode arrays into standard cell culture plates.
This system enables high-throughput extracellular recordings from many organoids without specialised workflows.
Using this system, we record electrophysiological signals from 74 human cortical organoids, the largest scale reported in organoid electrophysiology studies to the best of our knowledge.
The measurements involve capturing electrophysiological phenotypes across neurotypical and Angelman Syndrome organoids.
We also show that the use of carbon nanotubes in place of conventional gold electrodes achieves superior electrical, electrochemical, and electromechanical properties at a fraction of the cost while enabling a new scalable manufacturing technique.
This technology establishes a standardised and accessible route to large-scale electrophysiological measurements in organoids.
