Overview
Caliper Life Sciences (NASDAQ: CALP) is a leading provider of cutting-edge technologies enabling researchers in the life sciences to create life-saving and enhancing medicines and diagnostic tests more quickly and efficiently. Caliper has compiled numerous best-in-class solutions and is aggressively innovating new technologies to bridge the gaps that exist in bringing in vitro assays to in vivo results and ultimately into cures for human disease. With a keen focus on clinically-relevant experimentation, Caliper’s portfolio of offerings includes state-of-the-art microfluidics, lab automation & liquid handling, optical imaging technologies, and discovery & development outsourcing solutions.Our company represents a community of intelligent, highly-motivated people dedicated to working together as a team to improve the human condition through innovation in life sciences research. We maintain world headquarters in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and direct sales, service and application-support operations in biopharmaceutically-active countries around the globe. Caliper’s customers and partners include leading pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, and AstraZeneca, among others.
Microfluidics, Lab Automation & Liquid Handling
Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology represents a significant advancement in laboratory experimentation, bringing the benefits of miniaturization, integration and automation to numerous research-based industries. Caliper’s microfluidic LabChip® systems include instruments, experiment-specific reagents and software. Our chips contain networks of miniaturized, microfabricated channels, some scarcely wider than 1 micrometer, through which fluids and chemicals are moved to perform experiments. Fluid movement is controlled via pressure or voltage, and an integrated optical system detects the results of particular experiments. Because we have great flexibility in channel design, and can exert split-second computer control over fluid flow, our LabChip systems provide the benefits of improved data accuracy and reproducibility, reduced cost and higher speed – all of which leads to expanded individual researcher capability and improved enterprise-wide productivity.Caliper also offers an extensive portfolio of lab automation and liquid-handling solutions. Our automation systems combine the reliability of robust, industry-standard automation building blocks with modular table foundations to create customized and application-specific workstations with unprecedented flexibility, compactness, throughput and scalability. Caliper’s liquid-handling workstations incorporate leading-edge liquid handling technology with unique options and accessories for optimizing a wide array of life science protocols. Our solutions can address fluid volumes as small as 10 nanoliters with outstanding accuracy, ensuring consistent liquid delivery in changing environmental conditions, including temperature and sample viscosity variations.
Optical Imaging
Through its acquisition of Xenogen, Caliper is now the market-leading developer of in vivo biophotonic technology, which allows for real-time, non-invasive exploration of genes, proteins, pathogens, and tumor cells in living animals. Caliper offers a complement of patented biophotonic and fluorescent imaging technologies, as well as genetically modified animal programs. Our product lines include an impressive selection of imaging systems, biological reagents, specialized light producing animal models, and genetic modification programs for pharmaceutical and biotechnology research and development. Caliper also provides commercial and academic customers with proprietary methods via our Optical Imaging Patent Suite. The notification of allowance of Caliper’s patent claims for conjugate fluorescence imaging methods from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has added yet another valuable component to Caliper's widespread intellectual property estate.Discovery and Development Outsourcing Solutions
Caliper’s Discovery Alliances & Services division (CDAS) was created from the integration of NovaScreen, a provider of in vitro discovery services, and Xenogen Biosciences, a provider of in vivo customized target and compound evaluation programs. CDAS develops, utilizes, and provides a comprehensive array of services and innovative animal models to improve the productivity, accelerate the pace, and reduce the cost of the drug discovery process. The in vitro service arm of CDAS includes a comprehensive array of in vitro drug discovery and development solutions including more than 800 screening assays that help define the mode of action, side effect profiles, selectivity, and other relevant activities of drug candidates. In vivo capabilities include: transgenic production, comprehensive and therapeutic area-focused phenotyping, non-invasive in vivo optical imaging, and in vivo compound profiling safety assessment.Caliper’s I-I Bridge Vision
At Caliper, we have built and continue to augment a continuum of solutions designed to help our customers effectively “bridge” the gaps that exist in bringing in vitro assays to in vivo results and ultimately into cures for human disease. We refer to this concept as “the I-to-I Bridge.”Perhaps the most widely publicized challenge facing the life sciences industry is to enhance the productivity of drug discovery. While the advent of the high throughput screening era has greatly increased experimental efficiency, it has also resulted in dramatically higher failure rates. Late stage clinical failures have become even more costly for pharmaceutical companies and devastating for smaller biotechnology companies. Caliper is developing and commercializing innovative technologies to improve the predictive nature of earlier experimentation in order to increase the overall success rate of pharmaceutical R&D efforts.
Our view of the discovery pipeline is that the early in vitro experiments are performed with very high experimentation efficiency – meaning that assays are executed at high throughput and low cost per data point. This allows for rapid experiment cycles where a compound’s structure can be refined and optimized in a quick turnaround cycle. But while experimentation efficiency is high for early in vitro assays, such assays are notoriously low on relevance to patient outcomes. Stated differently, success in finding a hit in a high throughput screen does not readily translate into a cure for patient diseases.
In contrast, clinical studies are low in experimentation efficiency, requiring substantial investments of time and money to obtain even a single data point. Success in clinical trials, however, is very highly correlated with curing disease and hence such experiments are high in relevance to human outcomes.
Caliper’s strategic mission is to shift the current discovery process: through our focus on the I-to-I Bridge, we provide translational instruments, services and technologies that are designed to significantly increase the relevance of in vitro assays to human outcomes. We are also actively engaged in R&D and collaborative projects to hasten innovation toward this end.
The oncology therapeutic area serves as an example of the I-to-I Bridge in action. Caliper provides automation and microfluidics detection for high throughput screening of kinase targets using our LabChip platform. We extend microfluidics into the kinase profiling and selectivity screening area using our EZ Reader instrumentation series and ProfilerPro kinase reagent kits. We further offer engineered oncology tumor cell lines that have built-in luciferase expression constructs for assessing cell viability & proliferation. These exact same cell lines can be implanted into mice for either subcutaneous, orthotopic, or metastatic in vivo efficacy disease modes, and our IVIS in vivo imaging system can be used to monitor tumor progression. Each of these technologies can be accessed in-house through instrumentation acquisition from Caliper or the studies can be outsourced to Caliper’s Discovery Alliances & Services division.
Watch the Video Introduction to Caliper Life Sciences