HOPKINTON, Mass., April 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: CALP), a leading provider of tools and services for drug discovery and life-sciences research, today announced that its Caliper Discovery Alliances and Services (CDAS) unit has formed a research collaboration with Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), one of the nation's largest health systems.

The health care system's Center for Translational Research (CTR), which is part of CHI's Institute for Research and Innovation, will work with Caliper to develop improved methods for evaluating and predicting the efficacy of new cancer drugs.  Under this program, CTR will provide fresh human tumor samples to CDAS for CDAS to perform biomarker and standard-of-care drug resistance/sensitivity studies on these samples.  CDAS will grow the CTR samples under various experimental conditions, including traditional two-dimensional cell culture, three-dimensional (3-D) in vitro culture, and in vivo culture in mice, and the CTR will supply key treatment history and diagnostic data for these tumor sources.

The drug discovery industry demands better, more clinically relevant drug screening services utilizing cellular models that mimic the function of living tissues to reduce the drug candidate attrition rate between the stages of in vitro and in vivo experimentation. Optimized 3D cell assays or assays performed on human tumor cells maintained in a similar tumor microenvironment under the skin of mice, may provide valuable information to better predict drug efficacy in humans. CDAS provides oncology drug discovery assays based on a variety of biological output parameters such as proliferation, viability, apoptosis or specific biomarkers applied under conventional monolayer cell culture conditions. This new collaboration allows these testing methods to be extended to fresh tumor cells maintained under potentially more natural and disease-relevant conditions.

"We are excited to be working with Caliper Life Sciences, one of the leading companies in developing innovative tools that enable next generation drug development," said Jeffrey Otto, National Director of the Center for Translational Research.  "Partnerships such as this one are essential to our mission at the CTR to help advance personalized medicine."

"We are pleased to have entered into this new collaboration with the Center for Translational Research," said Kevin Hrusovsky, President and CEO of Caliper Life Sciences.  "With increasing incidence of oncology drug candidates failing in late-stage clinical trials, and with rapidly expanding knowledge of clinically relevant biomarkers, it is critical to develop comprehensive and disease-relevant cancer models that can be used to guide patient stratification to improve clinical safety and efficacy.  Access to human tumor samples through our new collaboration with CHI will complement Caliper's broad offering of translational research services and contribute to our programs to reduce attrition or rescue failed drug candidates.  Taken together, our personalized medicine strategies should facilitate the development of therapeutics and companion diagnostics to ultimately improve treatment success rates."  

More information on this research collaboration can be obtained from Caliper (booth #332) at the 102nd American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, April 2-6, 2011 in Orlando, Florida.

About the Center for Translational Research (CTR)

Catholic Health Initiatives' CTR is an emerging participant and partner in the realization of personalized medicine. The CTR, based in Towson, MD., is a national laboratory that leverages its molecular diagnostics, CLIA laboratory, biospecimen repository, and custom development capabilities to enable improved treatment options for patients. The CTR further acts as an innovation catalyst for the CHI system by focusing on personalized medicine in the healthcare setting. CHI, which had annual revenues of $8.6 billion in 2009, is a national health system that includes 73 hospitals in 18 states.

About Caliper Life Sciences

Caliper Life Sciences is a premier provider of cutting-edge technologies enabling researchers in the life sciences industry to create life-saving and enhancing medicines and diagnostic tests more quickly and efficiently.  Caliper is aggressively innovating new technology to bridge the gap between in vitro assays and in vivo results, enabling the translation of those results into cures for human disease.  Caliper's portfolio of offerings includes state-of-the-art microfluidics, lab automation and liquid handling, optical imaging technologies, and discovery and development outsourcing solutions. For more information please visit www.caliperLS.com.

NOTE:  Caliper is a registered trademark of Caliper Life Sciences, Inc.  

SOURCE Caliper Life Sciences, Inc.