# Carterra **Type:** venture **Status:** Draft **Confidence:** Medium **Tier:** C **Focus:** surface plasmon resonance, microfluidics, monoclonal antibody characterization, high-throughput biosensors, biotherapeutics discovery **Identifiers:** cik=0001541582, ein=83-0413045 **Roles:** biology-life-sciences, hardware-engineering, physical-sciences, software-engineering, sales-business-development **Stage:** Established private instrument company; formerly Wasatch Microfluidics (renamed Carterra, Inc. in May 2017) **Primary Location:** Salt Lake City, UT **Utah Location:** Salt Lake City, UT **Region:** Salt Lake City **Domain:** health-bio, materials-mfg **Website:** https://carterra-bio.com **Updated:** 2026-08-11 **Needs-reviewed:** 2026-08-11 **Pull:** *University of Utah microfluidics spun into array SPR instruments that pharma labs use to characterize whole antibody libraries at once.* ## Summary Carterra builds high-throughput surface plasmon resonance (SPR) instruments — chiefly the LSA family and newer Vega/Ultra platforms — for monoclonal-antibody discovery and characterization. The company's own 2017 rename release states it was **Wasatch Microfluidics, Inc.** until **2017-05-01**, when it became **Carterra, Inc.**; that release also says the company was founded in **2005** and is based in Salt Lake City ([rename announcement](carterra-wasatch-microfluidics-rename-2017.md)). Its homepage lists **825 N. 300 W. Ste. C309, Salt Lake City, UT 84103** ([official site](carterra-official-website.md)). The Utah origin is documented outside the company's marketing: a University of Utah Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute profile says the firm **formed on the U campus in 2004** from mechanical-engineering professor **Bruce Gale's** work, with Josh Eckman developing it through the Lassonde New Venture Development Center ([Lassonde profile](lassonde-wasatch-microfluidics-profile.md)). The profile predates the Carterra name and does not state a legal incorporation date. ## Impact Antibody therapeutics depend on knowing how candidates bind — kinetics, affinity, and epitope diversity — early enough to choose the right clones from large libraries. Carterra's instruments sit in that characterization step. The company's 2017 release describes array-based SPRi detection coupled to microfluidics for high-throughput mAb library screening ([rename announcement](carterra-wasatch-microfluidics-rename-2017.md)). Independent of company copy, a 2020 *PLOS ONE* industry collaboration measured anti-PD-1 antibody binding kinetics on a **Carterra LSA** and compared results to a Biacore 8K, reporting near-identical rate and affinity constants on flat sensor chips and using the LSA for epitope binning across the panel ([PD-1 landscape paper](carterra-pd1-antibody-landscape-plos-one-2020.md)). That paper is evidence the platform is used in pharmaceutical antibody-characterization work, not merely sold for it — though it validates one instrument class in one therapeutic area, not market share. **Bet:** that making SPR truly high-throughput — hundreds of parallel interactions per run — shifts antibody discovery from triaging a few clones to characterizing whole libraries, and that the bottleneck moved from "can we measure binding?" to "can we measure all of them?" The honest counterweight: this is a tools vendor to drug discovery, not a therapeutic developer; impact is indirect and concentrated in labs that can afford specialized biosensor platforms. No third-party measure of how widely deployed Carterra systems are appears in the captured sources. ## Utah Context Carterra is a documented University of Utah spinout lineage: campus formation in 2004, Lassonde commercialization programs, and continued Salt Lake City headquarters on the company's own site. It connects the wiki's `health-bio` instrument makers to the U's mechanical-engineering and entrepreneurship pipeline. ## What They Need Now The company's homepage and careers navigation point to instrument sales, applications support, and software for kinetics and epitope analysis — roles spanning biophysics applications scientists, microfluidics and optical hardware engineers, and software for high-throughput biosensor data ([official site](carterra-official-website.md)). Specific open requisitions were not captured here. ## Open Questions - **No corporate identifier resolved.** No `utah-entity`, `ein`, or SEC record has been pulled; a Utah Division of Corporations search could confirm the Wasatch Microfluidics → Carterra legal-entity continuity and incorporation date. - **Founding year conflict.** The 2017 company release says founded **2005**; the Lassonde profile describes campus formation in **2004**. Both may be true (idea/team vs incorporation) but the wiki does not have a registry record to reconcile them. - **Market position is unverified.** Superlatives on the company site ("highest-throughput SPR platforms on the market") are self-reported. The peer-reviewed source validates instrument use in one study; it does not establish share of pharma antibody-screening labs. - **Headcount and revenue** are not stated on the captured homepage. ## Evidence - [Source: Carterra Official Website](carterra-official-website.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/carterra-official-website.md · https://carterra-bio.com/ - [Source: Wasatch Microfluidics Announces Name Change to Carterra (2017)](carterra-wasatch-microfluidics-rename-2017.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/carterra-wasatch-microfluidics-rename-2017.md · https://carterra-bio.com/news/wasatch-microfluidics-announces-name-change-to-carterra-inc-and-new-high-throughput-spr-instrument/ - [Source: Lassonde — Wasatch Microfluidics Profile](lassonde-wasatch-microfluidics-profile.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/lassonde-wasatch-microfluidics-profile.md · https://lassonde.utah.edu/wasatch-microfluidics-from-the-lassonde-institute-to-pfizer-research-offices/ - [Source: Assessing the Binding Properties of the anti-PD-1 Antibody Landscape (2020)](carterra-pd1-antibody-landscape-plos-one-2020.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/carterra-pd1-antibody-landscape-plos-one-2020.md · https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229206