CellarisBio announces patent issuance and launch of MICRO-TAG cell target engagement products at SLAS2026
Newly patented MICRO‑TAG platform brings real‑time, in‑cell target engagement to the forefront of drug discovery
11 Feb 2026
CellarisBio has announced the issuance of its flagship U.S. patent covering the MICRO‑TAG® technology platform and the commercial launch of its first MICRO‑TAG® reagent product line at the SLAS 2026 International Conference & Exhibition in Boston.
These milestones position MICRO‑TAG® as a real‑time cellular target engagement platform for drug discovery across both conventional and historically challenging targets.
The newly issued patent, “High Throughput Drug Screening Methods” (US12510537B2), secures foundational intellectual property for MICRO‑TAG’s real‑time cellular target engagement chemistry and workflows. The commercial launch follows extensive validation of MICRO‑TAG technology across 100+ drug targets.
MICRO‑TAG is the first reagent‑based platform to enable real‑time, temperature‑series measurement of drug–target engagement directly in cells. Built on a novel fluorescence enzyme complementation chemistry that activates only upon intracellular target engagement, the system delivers deep mechanistic insight not accessible through conventional endpoint assays.
The technology is particularly impactful for challenging drug targets, including membrane proteins and transcription factors, that cannot be reliably studied using traditional biophysical methods such as surface plasmon resonance (SPR) or microscale thermophoresis (MST).
The newly released MICRO‑TAG reagent product line includes:
- MICRO‑TAG® Cellular DEL Kit – for cellular DNA‑encoded library discovery with real‑time engagement readouts
- MICRO‑TAG® Real‑Time Hit Validation Kit – for cellular target engagement–based hit validation and optimization
- MICRO‑TAG® Functional Target Validation Kit – for linking target engagement to downstream functional response
The MICRO‑TAG platform is scalable, automatable, and programmatically flexibly compatible with standard real‑time detection systems.
“MICRO‑TAG enables discovery teams to unlock challenging drug targets that have historically evaded drug discovery, thus accelerating discovery timelines and enabling new therapies,” said Dr. Elmar Nurmemmedov, Co‑Founder & CEO of CellarisBio.