Seminar focuses on approaches to improve small molecule discovery programs

Oct 23 2009

Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALP), a leading provider of tools and services for drug discovery and life sciences research, last week held the latest seminar in its "Innovation for Experimentation" series. The seminar, hosted by Novartis at its global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, focused on approaches to improve small molecule discovery programs through faster chemistry cycles and better decision-making about which compounds to progress through such programs.

Dr. Martin Mackay, President of Pfizer Global Research & Development, provided engaging commentary on Pfizer's research priorities and direction and also discussed the benefits of Caliper's LabChip technology, stating that "Caliper Life Sciences is a strategic partner of Pfizer Global Research & Development."

Highlights of the event included presentations on the use of Caliper's ProfilerPro® Kinase Selectivity Assay System to provide rapid information to chemists about the potency and selectivity of their drug compounds, the use of real-time kinetic data from this LabChip platform to enable chemists to design molecules with better therapeutic windows, and the ability of the high fidelity data generated by Caliper's EZReader® platform to enable higher throughput fragment-based screening approaches.

In addition, Kevin Hrusovsky, CEO of Caliper Life Sciences, offered compelling evidence of the impact scientists are making on drug pipelines and research productivity using Caliper technologies and unveiled exciting new technologies under development at Caliper. "We are inspired by the amazing research being done by our customers using LabChip systems to create life-saving drugs," he said. "We're proud of our close association with senior R&D leadership throughout the industry, which enabled our global ''Innovation for Experimentation' seminar series to be so successful. We are particularly grateful to Novartis for hosting this meeting at their stunning headquarters in Basel, Switzerland."

Caliper also introduced several new ready-to-use profiling reagent panels for the ProfilerPro Kinase Selectivity Assay System, as well as the availability of custom ProfilerPro plates, which can be tailored for particular therapeutic targets, kinase pathways, disease areas or side-effect/liability assays. Additionally, Caliper introduced a number of novel assays for epigenetic targets and cytochrome p450 toxicity assays.

Speakers at this event included leading scientists from Novartis, Pfizer, Novartis, Biaffin, EMD-Serono, Institute of Cancer Research UK, Leibniz-Institut fur Molekulare Pharmakologie - Berlin, the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and others. In all, the seminar series featured more than 60 customer presentations and attracted more than 600 customers from research organizations throughout the world.