Start-Up

Name: Calibrant Biosystems Inc.

Location: Gaithersburg

Funding: $8.5 million from the National Institutes of Health, $1.5 million from the Defense Department, $100,000 from the National Science Foundation and $98,994 from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships program.

Big idea: A technology that analyzes isolated cells from human tissue samples for protein biomarkers, which can indicate the presence of a particular disease. The technology is unique in its ability to examine very small tissue samples, said Don DeVoe, president and co-founder. "We can work with around 10,000 isolated cells from tumor tissue removed in a biopsy, and we've developed techniques that allow us to remove proteins from this limited amount of tissue." The smaller the sample, the more relevant it is to the disease, and the more usable data researchers can glean from analysis, DeVoe said. Calibrant's technology can identify proteins that can be used as drug targets, evaluate the toxicity of a compound at very early stages and stratify patient populations during clinical trials.

The technology can also be used for prognostic and diagnostic purposes. "We can do studies of biopsies from patients to look at proteins that are present only in certain stages of the disease," DeVoe said. "By doing retrospective studies where the clinical outcome is known, we can track proteins which are unique for different outcomes." That allows doctors to identify a disease, figure out which stage it is in and predict how it will progress.

How it works: A surgeon removes a piece of tissue, which is then sectioned. A pathologist examines the sections and identifies the cells of interest, such as tumor cells, and isolates them. The proteins contained in the cells are removed, separated based on their physical properties and analyzed at very high resolution.

Where the idea was hatched: The company was formed initially as an instrumentation company, DeVoe said. "We started the company intending to develop the tools for next-generation protein analysis." DeVoe and Cheng Lee, co-founder and chief executive, licensed the technology that they developed at the University of Maryland, where they are both on the faculty. The company's focus changed to biomarker discovery after more promising technologies were developed in-house after launch.

Customers: Calibrant works with pharmaceutical companies developing drugs. DeVoe said he could not identify individual customers.

Price: Varies. "We generally enter into partnerships that do involve milestone payments to meet certain goals together with the sharing of intellectual property," DeVoe said.

Founded: 2000

Who's in charge: Lee and DeVoe

Employees: 12

Web site: http://www.calibrant.com

Partners: National Institutes of Health, the Cleveland Clinic, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Yale University School of Medicine and the University of Maryland.

What the name means: "Calibrant means that by which one calibrates," DeVoe said. "As a biomarker discovery company Calibrant is a very apt name because our data is the data by which others can calibrate."

Where will you be in five years?: "We really believe that we're positioned to be the leading partner of drug development companies in applying biomarker discovery for targeted therapeutic development," DeVoe said.

Quote: "Drug companies in general have relied on the blockbuster model for many, many years, where you have a compound that's being developed for mass medicine," DeVoe said. "Companies are beginning to move away from that model and think about targeted medicine."

-- Andrea Caumont