Bridging In Vitro and In Vivo Experimentation

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.

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.

Caliper’s outsourcing division, Discovery Alliances & Services (CDAS), puts into practice many of the translational instruments and technologies offered by Caliper. Our in vitro to in vivo contract research capabilities in oncology and immunology therapeutic areas serve as examples of the I-to-I Bridge in action.

As an example, CDAS oncology capabilities utilizes automation and microfluidics detection for high throughput screening and profiling of kinase targets using our LabChip platform. 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 models, and our IVIS in vivo imaging system can be used to monitor tumor progression. Each of these technologies can be outsourced to Caliper’s Discovery Alliances & Services division.