This critical review highlights significant technical advances and in vivo studies from the last five years that facilitate the development of diagnostic tools for brain disorders.

We demonstrate here a method that perfuses a small region of an organotypic hippocampal culture with a solution containing an enzyme substrate, a neuropeptide. Perfusate containing hydrolysis products is continually collected and subsequently analyzed for the products of the enzymatic degradation of the peptide substrate. The driving force for perfusion is an electric field. The fused silica capillaries used as "push" and "pull" or "source" and "collection" capillaries have a ζ-potential that is negative and greater in magnitude than the tissue's ζ-potential. Thus, depending on the magnitudes of particular dimensions, the electroosmotic flow in the capillaries augments the fluid velocity in the tissue. The flow rate is not directly measured; however, we determine it using a finite-element approach. We have determined the collection efficiency of the system using an all d-amino acid internal standard. The flow rates are low, in the nL/min range, and adjustable by controlling the current or voltage in the system. The collection efficiency of the d-amino acid peptide internal standard is variable, increasing with increased current and thus electroosmotic flow rate. The collection efficiency can be rationalized in the context of a Peclet number. Electroosmotic push-pull perfusion of the neuropeptide galanin (gal1-29) through the extracellular space of an organotypic hippocampal culture results in its hydrolysis by ectopeptidase reactions occurring in the extracellular space. The products of hydrolysis were identified by MALDI-MS. Experiments at two levels of current (8-12 μA and 19-40 μA) show that the probability of seeing hydrolysis products (apparently from aminopeptidases) is greater in the Cornu Ammonis area 3 (CA3) than in the Cornu Ammonis area 1 (CA1) in the higher current experiments. In the lower current experiments, shorter peptide products of aminopeptidases (gal13-29 to gal20-19) are seen with greater frequency in CA3 than in CA1 but there is no statistically significant difference for longer peptides (gal3-29 to gal12-29).

Many sampling methods have been developed to measure the extracellular concentrations of solutes in the extracellular space of mammalian tissue. However, few have been used to quantitatively study the various processes, such as enzymatic degradation, that determines the fate of these solutes. For a method to be useful in this pursuit, it must be able to 1) perfuse tissue and collect the perfusate for quantitative analysis of the solutes introduced and reaction products produced, 2) control the average residence time of the active solutes, and 3) have the appropriate spatial resolution for the process of interest. Our lab previously developed a perfusion technique based on electroosmosis (EO), called EO push-pull perfusion (EOPPP), that is in principle suitable to meet these needs. However, much like the case for other sampling methods that came before, there are parameters that are needed for quantitative interpretation of data but that cannot be measured easily (or at all). In this paper, we present a robust finite element model that provides a deep understanding of fluid dynamics and mass transport in the EOPPP method, assesses the general applicability of EOPPP to studying enzyme activity in the ECS, and grants a simple approach to data treatment and interpretation to obtain, for example, Vmax and Km for an enzymatic reaction in the extracellular space of the tissue. This model is a valuable tool in optimizing and planning experiments without the need for costly experiments.

This review covers recent advances in sampling fluid from the extracellular space of brain tissue by electroosmosis (EO). Two techniques, EO sampling with a single fused-silica capillary and EO push–pull perfusion, have been developed. These tools were used to investigate the function of membrane-bound enzymes with outward-facing active sites, or ectoenzymes, in modulating the activity of the neuropeptides leu-enkephalin and galanin in organotypic-hippocampal-slice cultures (OHSCs). In addition, the approach was used to determine the endogenous concentration of a thiol, cysteamine, in OHSCs. We have also investigated the degradation of coenzyme A in the extracellular space. The approach provides information on ectoenzyme activity, including Michaelis constants, in tissue, which, as far as we are aware, has not been done before. On the basis of computational evidence, EO push–pull perfusion can distinguish ectoenzyme activity with a ~100 µm spatial resolution, which is important for studies of enzyme kinetics in adjacent regions of the rat hippocampus.