Spun out of technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in November 2003 as Caldera Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in December 2014 name was changed to XRpro Sciences, Inc. After acquisition of assets of Icagen, Inc., the firm changed name again (to Icagen, Inc) with executive offices re-located in Durham, NC. SBIR-involved through FY 15, Caldera Pharmaceuticals had provided proprietary drug discovery services for high-throughput ion-channel inhibitor assays and enzyme activity assays. Pioneering label-free measurement of protein-drug binding, the firm's technology allows the screening of tens of thousands of protein-drug interactions per day with no modifications required for either the drug candidate or the protein. This eliminates costly and error-inducing chemical labels and provides data that more closely approximates in vivo drug behavior. The company provides real-time kinetic data on hERG channel activity on intact cell populations, and can also screen 10,000 ion-channel inhibitors in one day, as well as screen 10,000 enzyme substrates in a few hours. X-ray fluorescence is analogous to common optical fluorescence, but using an X-ray excitation light source. X-ray photons excite inner-shell electrons, causing individual atoms to fluoresce without requiring any sort of large organic fluorophores. Each chemical element emits X-ray photons with a characteristic energy. Caldera's technology has broad application - including interrogating live cells - and is compatible with standard lab automation.
