Caliper Owners Group Meeting Showcases Critical Role of Biopharma and Academic Researchers for Improving Healthcare and Quality of Life

HOPKINTON, Mass., June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALP), a leading provider of tools and services for drug discovery and life sciences research, hosted its 2010 annual Customers Owners Group (COG 2010) meeting on June 9 and 10. This thought-leadership conference is focused on sharing knowledge, insights, and techniques that accelerate the drug discovery and development process, leading to the next generation of breakthrough diagnostics and therapies.

Next Generation Sequencing pioneer Dr. George Church of Harvard Medical School kicked off COG 2010 with a keynote presentation focused on how technological advances in sequencing, coupled with a deeper understanding of the interpretation and clinical utility of genomic data, will revolutionize the healthcare industry.

Kevin Hrusovsky, president and chief executive officer of Caliper, concluded the meeting with a keynote presentation illustrating how next generation tools will revolutionize medicine.  He challenged participants to set goals for themselves and their labs to utilize these tools to increase life expectancy by 10 years by 2020 while controlling healthcare system costs, and to find cures for cancer and heart disease, two leading causes of death in the U.S.  Hrusovsky's vision focuses on three key diagnostic and three key therapeutic themes that will substantially revolutionize medicine. Genome sequencing, biomarkers/MDx, and non-invasive imaging are enabling diagnostic tools that can be deployed both to accelerate preclinical research and to provide faster, more accurate analysis of patient conditions. Vaccines, biotherapeutics, and stem cells are targeted therapeutic tools that will substantially reduce both the incidence and prevalence of disease. Cumulatively, these tools enable personalized medicine, which ensures that each person's health care is guided in a customized manner to achieve an optimal clinical outcome.  Caliper's technologies are playing an increasingly important role in each of these key applied application areas.  

"The discoveries and presentations shared during COG 2010 clearly show the role of Caliper's technologies in enabling experimentation that bridges the gap between in vitro assays and in vivo results," Hrusovsky said. "We are collaborating with our customers to make pioneering experimentation possible by creating solutions that improve data quality, increase throughput, and reduce the cost per data point."

Throughout the meeting, customer presentations focused on how advances in laboratory tools are accelerating experimentation, improving the predictive nature of discovery research, and providing scientists with high quality data throughout the drug development process. This contributes to an increase in the overall success rate of pharmaceutical R&D efforts and helps bring new, cutting-edge treatments to market faster and cheaper.

More than 200 attendees participated in the meeting, held at Caliper's Hopkinton headquarters. The event featured over 35 presentations from researchers representing life sciences companies and institutions, including Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Biogen Idec, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Millennium, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, ArQule, EMD-Merck, New England Biolabs, Epicentre, Covaris, Machery Nagel, Transgenomics, Access Genetics, PhyNexus, SRU Biosystems, Harvard, Stanford, University of North Carolina, Broad Institute, SUNY Upstate, and University of Sherbrooke. Globally over 500 customers have presented and participated in Caliper events this year.

COG 2010 presentations, keynotes and a summary video can be found on Caliper's website at: http://www.caliperls.com/support/caliper-owners-group.htm

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.

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

SOURCE Caliper Life Sciences, Inc.