Research Company Aids in Development of Cures and Vaccines through Innovation

The pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology companies spend considerable resources in the development of drugs and therapies leading to cures for a variety of diseases and otherwise chronic conditions. While there are a number of approaches to find solutions, some companies focus their research in the area of membrane proteins.




One such company is CALIXAR, with a focus on membrane protein isolation and GPCR technology. With nine PhDs among their 15 employees, the company, founded in 2011is working to provide companies with the solutions they need in the development of antibodies and vaccines.

Research using membrane proteins makes up more than half of all targets, yet producing and isolating membrane proteins in a native conformation without mutations or deletions and with high purity in solution often presents a challenge.

Many companies in their field rely on a methodology which often affects the membrane proteins integrity. This typically requires researchers to use bypass methods such as refolding or mutagenesis or not enough pure scaffolds systems.



According to CALIXAR, the company “overcomes this crucial issue, through the development of new tools and protocols for the deorphanization, identification, expression, extraction, purification, stabilization, structural functional characterization, crystallization of membrane proteins as well as detergent quantification.”

Calixar Team – Lyon, June 2017

Their approach uses original, innovative and customized chemistry aimed at adapting to the biochemical characteristics of the target during the solubilization/ purification/stabilization steps. In this process, starting biological material such as virus, bacteria, primary cells, organs, etc. can be endogenous or recombinant systems.