Light Producing Microorganisms

Biological Products for Preclinical Development
Caliper has developed a wide range of bioluminescent pathogenic bacteria (both Gram-positive and Gram-negative) that can be used for drug discovery both in vitro and in vivo when used with Caliper’s IVIS optical imaging technology.

Advantages of using bioluminescent light producing microorganisms for drug discovery in vitro.

• - Rapid and readily amenable to high throughput screening, e.g., 96 or 384-well format
• - Sensitive - subtle changes in cellular viability are rapidly detected
• - Inexpensive - no additional substrates needed for bacterial assays 

Caliper's bioluminescent infectious disease light producing microorganisms have been developed to mimic both acute and chronic standard infection protocols presently used by the pharmaceutical industry, e.g., lung, sepsis, meningitis, GI, and biofilm infections. When used with a Caliper IVIS® Imaging System, models using light producing microorganisms allow the course of an infection to be monitored as the bacteria expand and migrate to different tissues in the animal, simply by imaging the bioluminescent signal detected from infection sites within the animal. Anti-infective drugs may then be used to treat the infections and their effectiveness can be determined by the change in the bioluminescent signal.

Advantages of using light producing microorganisms for drug discovery in vivo.

• - Rapid identification of lead drug candidates
• - Real-time efficacy data
• - May help to decrease drug failure by allowing disease relapse to be monitored in the same animal