Abstract

Micro & Nanotechnologies For Physical Phenotyping of Cells

Dino Di Carlo, Armond and Elena Hairapetian Chair in Engineering and Medicine, Professor and Vice Chair of Bioengineering, University of California Los Angeles

My lab uses microtechnology to interface at the scale of biology to aid in scientific investigation, develop new approaches to diagnose and monitor disease, and engineer therapies. A part of our laboratory develops tools to assay and exploit physical properties of cells in diagnostics and drug screening. Physical properties of cells can provide integrative, rapid, and low-cost information about disease. My discussion will focus on instruments we have developed that quantify single-cell physical phenotypes such as deformability, size, and contractility. These new tools show promise to enable diagnostic and screening approaches that assay immune cell function at the point-of-care, tumor cell malignancy with higher confidence than molecular markers alone, and many other cell phenotypes associated with disease.