UCLA engineer and entrepreneur Philip Tse is trying to turn a deceptively simple idea into a tool for one of medicine’s hardest emergencies: read the body’s immune response by measuring how individual cells physically behave. Working out of research pioneered in Dino Di Carlo’s lab at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Tse helped develop microfluidic technologies that can sort and analyze cells at very high speed, then pushed one branch of that work toward sepsis, a life-threatening condition caused by the body’s extreme response to infection. His path began with deformability cytometry, a technique that squeezes cells through tiny channels and measures how much they bend, much like learning about the filling of a stress ball by pressing on it. Those mechanical changes can reveal what is happening inside a cell, including signs of inflammation and disease that may not show up in a routine count. In collaboration with colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Tse showed that the approach could detect signals linked to both acute and chronic inflammation and could be refined to help identify a patient’s immune state. That matters because sepsis is notoriously difficult to manage early, when hours can make the difference between recovery and organ failure. The startup story here is not about a sudden pivot or a single lucky break, but about translating years of single-cell engineering into a faster, more informative way to read the immune system. It is also a window into how academic labs increasingly act like launchpads, where students help build technologies, win funding and shape ideas that may eventually reach the clinic.
From Lab Vision to Startup Mindset
Tse was one of the first students to join Di Carlo’s research group, and he remembers an early meeting in which Di Carlo laid out an ambitious vision: use microfluidic tools to study biology at the scale of individual cells. Microfluidics means controlling tiny volumes of fluid in channels often narrower than a strand of hair, allowing researchers to handle cells with unusual precision.
That lab environment, Tse said, already felt a lot like a startup. The team was not just doing experiments; it was building technologies, securing funding and publishing studies while trying to turn basic engineering ideas into practical tools.
Why Single Cells Matter
Many medical tests average signals across huge numbers of cells, which can wash out subtle but important differences. Looking at cells one at a time is more like listening to individual instruments in an orchestra instead of hearing only the blended sound.
That level of detail is especially useful for the immune system, where different cell states can signal infection, inflammation or recovery. A single-cell readout can capture those shifts earlier and more directly than broader measures, at least in principle.
The Core Technology: Deformability Cytometry
One of the group’s early advances came in flow cytometry, a broad family of techniques used to analyze cells individually as they pass through an instrument. In this case, the work relied on inertial microfluidics, which uses the natural forces created by fluid flow in tiny channels to position and sort cells quickly without complicated moving parts.
Tse’s doctoral dissertation focused on deformability cytometry. In plain terms, the method pushes cells through very small tubes and measures how much they deform under stress. Because a cell’s structure is tied to what is happening inside it, that mechanical response can act as a compact readout of cell health and activity, including early disease-related changes.
What the UCLA Team Found
Working with collaborators from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Tse showed that deformability cytometry could detect signatures associated with both acute and chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation is the body’s short-term, fast response to injury or infection, while chronic inflammation is a longer-lasting state linked to many diseases.
The team’s results suggested that these physical cell measurements could be refined further to identify a person’s immune state. That is an important distinction, because two patients may both look sick while their immune systems are actually behaving very differently, which can affect treatment decisions.
Why Sepsis Is Such a Difficult Target
Sepsis is not a single germ or a single symptom. It is a dangerous, fast-moving condition in which the body’s response to infection spirals into widespread damage, often affecting organs throughout the body.
Clinicians need better ways to recognize who is deteriorating and how a patient’s immune system is responding in real time. A tool built around single-cell mechanics could, in theory, offer a faster picture of immune dysfunction than slower or less nuanced testing approaches, which is why Tse’s startup has centered its effort on sepsis.
Fifteen Years of Platform Building
The startup did not emerge from one isolated experiment. Over roughly 15 years, Di Carlo’s lab built a broader technology base in microfluidics, microfabrication and nanotechnology, producing tools that can sort, manipulate and analyze thousands to millions of cells and molecules per second.
Microfabrication refers to the techniques used to build tiny structures, often borrowing methods from the semiconductor industry. Combined with nanotechnology, which deals with features measured at the scale of billionths of a meter, those methods helped the lab create systems aimed at rapid diagnostics, drug discovery and basic cell biology.
Why This Matters
The larger significance of Tse’s work is that it treats cells not just as bags of molecules but as physical objects whose shape and flexibility carry useful medical information. That opens a different route to diagnosis, one that may complement molecular tests rather than replace them.
It also shows how engineering can change what doctors are able to see. If immune states can be read quickly from how cells deform in flow, clinicians may gain an earlier warning system for conditions like sepsis, where treatment delays are costly and where better stratification of patients could improve care.
A Long Climb, Not a Sprint
Tse said his team never pivoted despite the difficulty of turning a lab technology into a deployable product, and he framed that persistence in personal terms: progress comes from steady work rather than speed. That philosophy fits the story of this technology, which has advanced step by step from lab concept to translational effort.
The next challenge is the hardest one for many academic inventions: proving that a promising device can work reliably outside the research setting, in the messy reality of clinical care. If Tse’s company can do that, the payoff would be larger than a single product launch; it would be evidence that single-cell engineering can move from elegant experiment to frontline medicine, one measured cell at a time.