BioSpyder awarded 5-year EPA contract, with a maximum value of $25 million to perform high throughput genetic toxicology screening.
Faster, Cheaper, Better - TempO-Seq™ Assay Establishes Itself as a Leading Gene Expression Profiling Tool.
BioSpyder Technologies, Inc. has been awarded the contract to perform High Throughput Toxicology Screening by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE). Since 2015, the EPA’s HHT Research Program has contracted with BioSpyder to perform toxicology screening using the BioSpyder TempO-Seq assay. This new contract is a significant increase on prior contracts reflecting the EPA’s commitment to using new approach methods to evaluate chemicals and a high level of satisfaction with BioSpyder's s TempO-Seq assay.
The EPA's CCTE coordinates the High Throughput Toxicology (HTT) Research Program, which is part of the EPA's broader Chemical Safety for Sustainability Strategic Research Action Plan. A major part of the EPA’s HTT research is the Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCast™). ToxCast is a multi-year effort launched in 2007 that uses high-throughput methods to expose living cells or isolated proteins to chemicals. The cells or proteins are then screened for changes in biological activity that may be indicative of potential toxic effects and eventually potential adverse health effects. The BioSpyder TempO-Seq assay has proven to be highly efficient and cost effective in screening the 100,000’s of samples that are being generated.
“Interest in high-throughput molecular testing has peaked due to SARS CoV-2, so the awarding of this contract is timely validation of our TempO-Seq assay,” said Joel McComb, BioSpyder CEO. “We thank the EPA CCTE team for being instrumental in helping establish BioSpyder, and our TempO-Seq assay as a leader in genetic toxicology screening”.
The team at the EPA CCTE grows cells and lyse in TempO-Seq buffer then ships them to BioSpyder in multi-well plate format. No purification step is required, saving cost and removing purification bias. BioSpyder assays the samples through multiplexed Tempo-Seq assays that measure transcriptomic changes for up to 20,000 – 21,000 protein coding genes directly on the cell lysates provided. Following sequencing, results including gene counts, QC metrics, and sequencing files are securely transferred to the EPA for analysis.
BioSpyder has been awarded by the US Environmental Protection Agency Computational Toxicology a 5-year contract that has a maximum total contract value of $25,000,000. This contract is the latest in a series of contracts awarded to BioSpyder from the EPA for HTT research since 2015. Two other contracts have been awarded to BioSpyder by this organization, one for $5 million and the other for $10 million, and been fully utilized and successfully fulfilled.