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Carterra is delivering a whole new way of screening and analyzing antibodies, pushing the limits in discovery of novel therapeutic candidates. Their solutions condense months of work into a few days. Carterra recently joined the Tetra Partner Network. Thankfully, we were able to catch Chris Silva, VP Global Marketing and Product, in between customer visits so that we can share their remarkable story.
In a sentence or two, what does Carterra do?
Carterra enables high-resolution antibody screening and characterization in a single step allowing biopharmaceutical companies to select drug candidates directly for their antibody library within 90 days or less. Carterra’ s proprietary high-throughput surface plasmon resonance (HT-SPR) technology delivers 100 times the data in 10% of the time, using 1% of the sample requirements of other label-free platforms. The technology was instrumental in recently bringing two therapeutics to the market by Eli Lilly.
Carterra’ s proprietary high-throughput surface plasmon resonance (HT-SPR) technology delivers 100 times the data in 10% of the time, using 1% of the sample requirements of other label-free platforms.
What is the founding story of Carterra?
Our co-founder and CEO, Josh Eckman, started developing IP around microfluidics as a graduate student in the School of Engineering at the University of Utah in 2004. Based on a business plan he submitted to a Utah Entrepreneur challenge, which he went on to win, Josh founded Wasatch Microfluidics from concept to a $1M investment from Pfizer ten years later. The company was acquired by a venture capital firm in 2016 and rebranded as Carterra in 2017. Carterra shipped its first units in 2018 and has over 100 LSA platforms across four continents as of early 2022.
In what ways are your products and software advancing scientific research?
The Carterra LSA instrument and industry-leading analysis software, enabling epitope binning and kinetic analyses, allow our customers to push the limits of what can be done in terms of throughput, time, and efficiency. The ability to effectively screen a large library of antibodies and understand affinity, kinetics, specificity, and epitope information, allows scientists to pick relevant drug candidates earlier in the process. Entire areas of study would not be possible and economically feasible without the high-resolution capabilities and cost efficiencies the LSA enables.
Entire areas of study would not be possible and economically feasible without the high-resolution capabilities and cost efficiencies the LSA enables.
Tell us about your customers, please.
We are proud to work with leading biopharmaceutical companies—including the largest 18 of 20 biopharmas in the world—CROs, academic labs, the FDA, and the NIH. The LSA now has more than 100 placements around the world, and we are working on expanding our application offerings to include TPD, DELs, and aptamers.
In what therapeutic areas are you seeing the greatest adoption for your solutions?
Our biggest area of focus to date has been antibody discovery supporting therapeutics for infectious disease, cancer, and immunology. Secondary areas of research include pain management, allergy, and autoimmune conditions.
What kind of results can customers expect?
The true value in our platform comes from the ability to process data from a large antibody library using kinetic and epitope binning assays. For example, the epitope binning function identifies antibody networks and communities in a map highlighting relationships to other antibodies in the library. By understanding this mechanism of action (MOA) earlier in the discovery process, customers can confidently pick drug candidates from within their library earlier in the process.
The true value in our platform comes from the ability to process data from a large antibody library using kinetic and epitope binning assays.
More importantly, our customers have come to expect a superior level of service with Carterra. We consider ourselves partners with our customers and dedicated to their success.
Have your solutions been used to develop a drug or therapeutic that’s gone to market?
Carterra’s technology played a key role in the development of two therapeutic monoclonal antibodies during the pandemic, including the first COVID-19 therapeutic granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA. AbCellera and Eli Lilly published these efforts respectively in Science and Cell Reports.
Carterra’s technology played a key role in the development of two therapeutic monoclonal antibodies during the pandemic, including the first COVID-19 therapeutic granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA.
What is the value of joining the Tetra Partner Network?
The Carterra platform generates a large volume of high-resolution data from each experiment. The ability of our customers to organize and store this data and compare it with other orthogonal assays enables the application of AI/ML to speed drug discovery. Moving discovery data to the cloud is nascent in biopharma and Carterra is excited to join the Tetra Partner Network, allowing our customers to maximize the value of their scientific data. As the volume of pharmaceutical data from around the world grows, the ability to seamlessly access data across multiple platforms will be a true accelerator.
Moving discovery data to the cloud is nascent in biopharma and Carterra is excited to join the Tetra Partner Network, allowing our customers to maximize the value of their scientific data.