A NOVEL, MINIMALLY INVASIVE TOOL FOR SINGLE-CELL EXPERIMENTATION AND SURGERY  
UCLA Technology Available For Licensing

BACKGROUND:  Single-cell surgery has allowed for a drastic increase in our understanding of biology at the level of an individual cell. However, several aspects of this technique have limited the experimental approaches utilized at this level. Foremost of these is the toxicity in which administration of experimental variables are introduced into individual cell cytoplasm, a process which requires disruption of the cell membrane with microcapillary puncture. This process is disruptive towards the cell and often results in cell lysis or death small or fragile cells. Consequently, alternative approaches to microcapillary puncture during single cell surgery must offer a less invasive method for experimentation at the single cell level.

INNOVATION:  UCLA Researchers have developed a novel method to bypass the cell membrane in single cell surgery. This approach utilizes laser induced heating of gold nanoparticles on a microcapillary adjacent to the cell, inducing the formation of a transient pore in a size approximately equal to the diameter of the capillary tip. The transient and small diameter of the pore formed by this process provides non-invasive access to the cell interior.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS: 

ADVANTAGES

Reference: UCLA Case No. 2007-564

For additional technical details and current licensing
availability, please contact the following UCLA office:

UCLA Office of Intellectual Property
11000 Kinross Avenue, Suite #200
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Tel: 310-794-0558 Fax: 310-794-0638
email: ncd@research.ucla.edu
NCD URL:   http://www.research.ucla.edu/tech/ucla07-564.htm

Lead Inventor: Eric Pei-Yu Chiou

UCLA Technologies Available for Licensing
http://www.research.ucla.edu/oipa/industry

Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of California.

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