Building Laboratories on Motes of Dust to Scale Life Science Research 1000-fold

Abstract

Modern biology increasingly depends on running huge numbers of experiments to understand how living cells work and how we can better treat disease. But today's laboratory tools were largely designed for experiments done one at a time, or at best, in small batches. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to rethink the laboratory itself by shrinking it down to the size of a single microscopic particle. We are developing what we call "Lab on a Particle" technologies: millions of tiny, engineered particles--smaller than a grain of dust--that each act as a self-contained laboratory. These particles can hold individual cells, capture molecules they produce, and carry out biochemical reactions, all while being processed and sorted using standard lab instruments. In effect, each particle becomes a smart test tube that runs its own experiment in parallel with millions of others. I will first explain how these particles are designed and manufactured, and how we program their surfaces to interact with cells and biomolecules. I will then show how this approach enables powerful new applications, including discovering therapeutic antibodies and T-cell receptors, studying how pairs of cells communicate, and evolving proteins with new

functions. By compressing entire laboratory workflows onto individual particles, these technologies allow us to perform experiments at scales that were previously impractical or impossible, often increasing throughput by orders of magnitude. This shift not only accelerates drug and diagnostic discovery, but also generates the large, functionally rich datasets needed to train modern artificial intelligence models in biology. Together, "Lab on a Particle" systems offer a path toward faster, more scalable, and more insightful life science research.

Bio

Dino Di Carlo is the Armond and Elena Hairapetian Professor of Bioengineering at UCLA, serial entrepreneur and inventor. He serves in academic leadership roles as the Chair of the Bioengineering Department and Deputy Director of a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. He is an author on >200 peer-reviewed articles and an inventor on >80 issued patents in the U.S. and across the world. His research focuses on the interface between micro & nanotechnology, information technology, and the life sciences. He also has served in business leadership roles. He co-founded several companies in the diagnostics, medical device, and biotech/pharmaceutical industries and continues to serve on the board of directors of many of these companies, and as a scientific advisor and mentor to startups, including Cytovale, Tempo Therapeutics, and Partillion Bioscience. His inventions are incorporated into commercial medical devices, such as Cytovale's IntelliSepTM test, which is the first test approved by the FDA to detect sepsis early in the emergency department, and Tempo Therapeutics' MAP Wound MatrixTM, which has shown efficacy in humans to regenerate tissue in large wounds. Other inventions from his lab scale and automate life science research, such as Nanovial technology from Partillion Bioscience, which allows antibody drug developers to rapidly discover new antibody sequences, accelerating life-saving drugs to the clinic. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed upon young scientists and engineers in the U.S.