Profile: Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (CALP.O)

Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (Caliper), incorporated on July 26, 1995, develops and sells products and services to the life sciences research community, a customer base that includes pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and government and other research institutions. The Company offers an array of products and services, many based on enabling technologies that address critical experimental needs in drug discovery and pre-clinical development, and related processes including drug formulation and quality control. Its technologies are also enabling for other life sciences applications beyond drug discovery, such as environmental-related testing, and in applied markets such as agriculture and forensics. On November 10, 2008, the Company completed the sale of its Pharmaceutical Development and Quality (PDQ) and AutoTrace product lines. In December 2009, the Company completed the sale of Xenogen Biosciences Corporation (XenBio), a subsidiary which provides in-vivo, pre-clinical CRO services, to Taconic Farms, Inc.

Imaging Systems

IVIS Imaging Systems and Living Image Software is the preclinical optical molecular imaging solution. Caliper IVIS systems enable bioluminescence and fluorescence detection, combination that enables a range of research. Caliper's Living Image software and mouse handling accessory items facilitate workflows for animal studies. Its portfolio of imaging systems includes IVIS Spectrum, IVIS 200, IVIS Kinetic, IVIS Lumina II, IVIS Options and Accessories, Bioware Products and LPTA Models.

The IVIS Spectrum in vivo optical imaging system can perform bioluminescent imaging and advanced fluorescent imaging, including spectral unmixing, trans-illumination, and 3 dimensional (3D) tomographic capabilities. The IVIS Imaging System 200 Series is a single-view 3D optical imaging system designed to improve quantitative outcomes of in vivo imaging, using Caliper's novel patented optical imaging technology to facilitate noninvasive longitudinal monitoring of disease progression, cell trafficking and gene expression patterns in living animals. IVIS 200 Series' instrumentation and software allow researchers to account for the effects of photon absorption and scattering in tissue, making bioluminescent source measurements more quantitative.

The IVIS Kinetic system provides a real time, imaging system enabling acquisition of biologically relevant events within milliseconds. The IVIS Kinetic system can perform both quantitative luminescence and fluorescence. The IVIS Kinetic system also offers a light-tight injection port which supports a syringe injector system enabling real time compound and/or substrate administration. The IVIS Lumina II provides an expandable, sensitive imaging system that is used for both fluorescent and bioluminescent imaging in vivo.

The Company offers various options and accessories to expand its IVIS workstations, which are sold separately from the imaging systems. It offers an anesthesia accessory package, which is designed to work with all of its IVIS imaging systems. It also provides an electrocardiograph monitoring accessory to monitor animal heart activity during imaging.

The Company’s Bioware lines of light-producing cells and microorganisms enable researchers to analyze the spread and treatment of cancer and infectious diseases, as well as to study immunology. In April 2008, it introduced Bioware Ultra cell lines. It offers approximately 29 lines of light-producing microorganisms, including E. coli, Pseudomonas, Salmonella and other gram negative bacteria, as well as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumonia and other gram positive bacteria. Caliper has developed approximately 16 tumor cell lines for breast, melanoma and prostate cancer. All of its Bioware products are optimized to work with its IVIS imaging systems. The Company offers several types of reagents for use in connection with its Bioware products and LPTA models. Its offerings include luciferin, a chemical compound that is introduced into cells and organisms to produce bioluminescence, and XenoFluor fluorescent labeling kits for fluorescent imaging.

Microfluidics Systems

In July 2008, the Company introduced two microfluidics-based separations products, the LabChip GX and LabChip GXII benchtop systems, for fast, automated, one dimensional electrophoretic separation of protein, DNA, and RNA samples. The LabChip GX represents genomics applications, while the GXII combines both genomics and protein research applications. The EZ Reader systems and ProfilerPro reagent kits provides an approach to turnkey kinase profiling and screening and mechanistic studies for a range of enzymatic targets which includes phosphodiesterases, histone deacetylases, proteases, phosphatases, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and many other target classes. Its ProfilerPro kinase panel plate kits presently consist of a representative 96 kinases that are pre-dispensed into 384-well microplates.

Automation and Liquid Handling Systems

The Company’s Caliper Sciclone Automated Liquid Handling (ALH) series features interchangeable 96- and 384-channel pipetting heads that can pipette and dispense volumes from 100 nanoliters to 200 microliters. The Caliper Sciclone liquid handler can be used as a standalone instrument, or integrated in a more complete system that incorporates automated microplate carriers such as its Twister robot, and other analytical instruments.

The Zephyr liquid handling instrument, is designed to handle key applications for compound management, high-throughput screening (HTS), genomics, proteomics and bio-analytical assays, as well as a number of commercially available kits. These applications include DNA/ ribonucleic acid (RNA) purification clean-ups, PCR setup, protein precipitation, solid phase extraction (SPE), protein purification solubility assays, kinase assays and cell-based assays. Zephyr’s small footprint makes it ideal for workbench operation, while the convenient deck design provides ready access from all four sides to consumables and accessories.

Staccato workstations provide automation for drug discovery, genomics, proteomics and drug development laboratories. Staccato systems are available in three base configurations: Mini Workstation Series, Application Series and Custom Systems Series. Staccato Mini Workstations offer the minimal amount of equipment required to automate basic liquid handling and material management tasks. Staccato Application Series are pre-configured and pre-integrated solutions for common applications, such as plate reformatting and replication, hit-picking, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and a variety of cell-based assays. Staccato Custom Systems use automation-friendly building blocks, iBlox, that are designed into custom configurations as dictated by the needs of the end user.

The Twister Universal Microplate Handler automates the movement of microplates to and from a microplate reader, washer, or other microplate-processing instrument. Twister I has a capacity of 80 microplates, and is used as a dedicated autoloader with a variety of scientific instruments. The Twister II provides increased integration capabilities and increased handling up to 320 standard microplates.

The TurboVap family of evaporators covers a range of formats from microplates to tubes and accommodates the unattended concentration or evaporation of any size sample up to 500mL.

The RapidTrace SPE Workstation is a modular, highly scalable, automated sample prep high throughput Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) platform. The RapidTrace can process up to 100 samples in less than two hours unattended.

Services

The Company provides a range of services to its customers. The Company’s service offerings include contract research and transgenic animal services, drug discovery and development services, environmental testing and product support.

The Company competes with Beckman Coulter, BioTek Instruments, CyBio, Hamilton, Innovadyne, Gilson, LabCyte, MDS Inc., PerkinElmer, Tecan, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Tomtec, Velocity 11, Symyx. Cerep, Millipore, Invitrogen (Life Technologies) and Carna Biosciences, Promega, Cisbio, Agilent, Bio-Rad Laboratories, General Electric, Beckman Coulter, Qiagen, GE Healthcare Discovery Systems, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, genOway, Ingenious Targeting Laboratory, Taconic-Artemis, OzGene, Sention Inc, Vela Pharmaceuticals Inc, Bionaut Pharmaceuticals Inc, ChemGenex Therapeutics Inc, CombinatoRx Inc, Ore Pharmaceuticals, MDS Pharma Services, Covance and Melior Discovery Inc.