3Brain is a Swiss deep-tech company developing high-density microelectrode array (HD-MEA) platforms for in vitro electrophysiology, enabling researchers to record and stimulate neural activity at single-cell resolution in laboratory settings. Founded in 2011 in Wadenswil, near Zurich, by Kilian Imfeld, Mauro Gandolfo, and Alessandro Maccione, the company was the first to introduce CMOS-based HD-MEA technology to overcome the limitations of passive microelectrode arrays.

The flagship CorePlate technology integrates CMOS microchips with per-well processing cores into multi-well cell culture plates (24-well and 96-well formats), enabling simultaneous recording from thousands of electrodes across all wells at once. The system captures extracellular signals (spikes and local field potentials) from neuronal cultures, brain organoids, acute brain slices, and cardiac tissue preparations. Integrated BrainWave software provides real-time visualization, connectivity analysis, and data management. The company has also developed the Accura 3D chip with micro-needle electrodes for intra-tissue penetration of three-dimensional samples.

3Brain serves over 80 customers in academic neuroscience and pharmaceutical drug discovery, primarily in Europe. Applications include drug screening (evaluating compound effects on neural firing patterns), disease modeling (observing abnormal network activity in patient-derived brain organoids for epilepsy, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's research), and fundamental connectivity studies. The company has raised over CHF 14 million and maintains R&D operations in both Switzerland and Genova, Italy.