Predicant is the company formed by Petricoin & Liotta's old boss, Richard Klausner, and an antagonist to Correlogic & Ciphergen. It is using a microfluidics approach to sample prep. This is the latest release out of them. Their website is pretty uninformative, and their management team doesn't look that impressive. The political stink involved from NCI's move away from Correlogic emanates from here.
latimes.com
>>HOPKINTON, Mass. and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif — January 06, 2005 — Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALP) and Predicant Biosciences, Inc., today announced that they have entered into an agreement under which Predicant has non-exclusively licensed a major portion of Caliper’s microfluidics patent estate for use with Predicant’s proprietary technology for the analysis of proteins using mass spectrometry. The agreement covers the full set of Caliper’s intellectual property assets that is relevant to Predicant’s product development efforts. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Predicant is using microfluidics as a core technology for the company’s proteomic tests, which are designed to identify complex protein patterns in blood as a means of diagnosing and monitoring disease. Microfluidics entails movement of fluids through a complex network of channels, each narrower than a human hair, and in this case with the end goal of separating proteins for analysis. Predicant has chosen to use microfluidics because this approach enables samples to be processed much more rapidly and reproducibly than is possible with traditional separation techniques.
“Caliper has the broadest intellectual property portfolio in microfluidics, and obtaining a license to this patent portfolio will help ensure that Predicant will have freedom to operate across a wide range of microfluidic technologies and processes,” said Deborah Neff, President and CEO of Predicant Biosciences. “We believe that being the first company in our field to license this intellectual property gives Predicant an important market advantage.”
For the second year in a row, Caliper’s portfolio ranked high in the annual patent survey published by the MIT Technology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com). In the most recent survey, published in May 2004, Caliper’s estate ranked second - after Pfizer - for overall technological strength in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical sector, and third across all industries for its “Current Impact Index”, which ranks the number of times the portfolio has been cited as prior art in other patents.
“Caliper has recently adopted a more open intellectual property out-licensing strategy, with the goal of permeating the life sciences, diagnostics and other industries with our microfluidics technologies. This new, more expansive approach to out-licensing our technology will not only serve our own strategic objective of continuing to further broaden microfluidics adoption, but will also benefit our partners, their customers, and the industry as a whole as better approaches to experimentation and testing become available,” said Kevin Hrusovsky, President and CEO of Caliper. “Predicant is the first to take advantage of Caliper’s new approach to out-licensing, and we believe other life sciences companies will be interested in licensing our technology as they discover ways to enhance the strength of their product or service offerings via incorporation of microfluidics.”
About Caliper Life Sciences
Caliper Life Sciences uses its advanced liquid handling and LabChip® technologies to create leading edge tools that accelerate drug discovery, enable diagnosis of disease and facilitate scientific research. Caliper headquarters are located in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, with R&D, operations and manufacturing facilities for LabChip devices in Mountain View, California, and direct sales, service and applications support throughout the world. Caliper customers and partners include many of the largest pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life sciences companies. For more information, please visit Caliper’s web site at www.caliperLS.com.
About Predicant
Predicant is an emerging life sciences company focused on developing tests to detect and diagnose disease through the analysis of complex protein patterns in blood. Predicant believes that this approach, which is based on major scientific research supporting the utility of protein biomarkers, will offer better diagnostic and prognostic accuracy than can be achieved with current proteomics approaches. Predicant’s method uses proprietary, integrated technology, which is designed to produce the high quality, reproducible results necessary for reliable clinical use. Predicant’s technology has broad potential application, including early disease detection, monitoring disease progression and predicting the effectiveness of therapy, as well as aiding in pharmaceutical research. The company’s website is www.predicant.com. <<
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Cheers, Tuck |
