Advances in microtechnology and information technology are leading to new innovations in understanding biology and improving health, enhancing the precision with which we diagnose diseases so that we can prepare personalized medicine catered to a patient’s specific needs in a cost-efficient manner. Dr. Dino Di Carlo, Professor of Bioengineering at University of California, Los Angeles, is engineering new systems, diagnostic devices, and therapies that will directly improve patient well-being. By exploiting the quirky physics at the micro - & nanoscale, he is able to simultaneously reduce costs and enable new modes to diagnose and treat disease.

With a diverse research laboratory of 21 postgraduate researchers and seven undergraduate student researchers, Dr. Di Carlo conducts highly interdisciplinary research and engages in active collaborations with researchers all across the US - at UCLA, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, University of Washington, Tulane, Iowa State, and University of New Mexico, and internationally in Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Germany, and Italy. During each summer, Dr. Di Carlo also hosts four high school interns, exposing these students from underrepresented groups to cutting-edge research questions, instruments, and techniques. Moreover, Dr. Di Carlo firmly believes in bringing research from the lab to where it can directly benefit human health, and has co-founded three companies to commercialize research that will help diagnose disease at the cellular level, give the most effective cancer drugs sooner, and heal wounds rapidly.

Current projects include:

• New Drugs for Asthma: The Di Carlo Laboratory is developing a novel rapid and cost-effective approach to find new drugs to treat asthma. Current ways to treat asthma have included prescribing anti-inflammatory drugs or drugs that will relax the muscles and open up the airways, but not every patient responds the same. Dr. Di Carlo and his team have found ways to screen how much force a cell can generate quickly, by using microtechnology and microscopy to look at how the cells are contracting. Ultimately, they hope to find molecules that can reduce the amount of force that cells are generating, so these can be further developed into drugs that can rapidly and more efficiently open up the airways.
• Liquid Biopsy: Dr. Di Carlo has engineered a tool to isolate cancer cells from blood to reduce the need for biopsies. Dr. Di Carlo’s goal is to provide the simplest (and lowest cost) approach to help doctors make the best treatment decisions. His laboratory has developed the Vortex Chip to isolate larger cancer cells from smaller blood cells in blood, rapidly, and without clog-prone filters. This technology will enable clinical labs to rapidly isolate and analyze cancer cells to identify mutations. Doctors can use this information to specify the right drugs for each patient. Dr. Di Carlo has commercialized this approach through a company called Vortex Biosciences, and continues to test utility in lung, breast, prostate, colon, pancreatic, and skin cancers, as well as leukemias.
• Infection-resistant Orthopedic Implants and Catheters: Patients in medical facilities often have to rely on medical devices like catheters. However, when bacteria start to colonize these indwelling medical devices and form biofilms, sticky aggregates of bacteria and bacterial secretions, they can lead to bloodstream infection. Dr. Di Carlo is developing ways to prevent these infections and physically break up biofilms formed on implanted devices, by using magnetic fields that penetrate tissue and magnetic nanoparticles that can be injected within or near the implanted device. By disrupting the sticky films, antibiotics can penetrate deeper and become more effective, rescuing the implant from surgical removal and leading to better patient outcomes.  
• Injectable Material for Fast Wound Healing: Dr. Di Carlo and his team are developing a new material to heal diabetic ulcers, burns, incisions, and other wounds by creating an injectable microporous scaffold for ingrowth of tissues. Current approaches to filling large wounds utilize a gel that prevents cell ingrowth into this material until it degrades. A better approach would be an injectable gel that both maintains mechanical support while it helps cells move and grow into the material, protecting the wound and leading to faster healing. There may be additional benefits of reducing scar formation with this method of fast healing, since scar forming cells have been found to be less involved in the healing process.