BioSpyder receives EPA contract worth up to $9.5 million to perform ecotoxicological screening.
Faster, Cheaper, Better - TempO-Seq™ Assay Establishes Itself as a Leading Gene Expression Profiling Tool.
Carlsbad, California, USA – November 10, 2021. BioSpyder Technologies, Inc. has been awarded the contract to perform High Throughput Compatible Gene Expression Profiling for Species of Ecotoxicological Relevance by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE). This is a five-year contract that has a maximum total contract value of $9.5 million. It is the latest in a series of contracts awarded to BioSpyder from the EPA for HTT research since 2015. Three other contracts were awarded to BioSpyder, worth up to $5 million, $10 million, and $25 million.
The contract for gene expression profiling for species of ecotoxicological relevance reflects the EPA’s commitment to developing ecologically oriented screening assays that achieve a high level of throughput. Broad scale gene expression profiling is viewed as both an important screening endpoint in and of itself, and as a tool to better understand the ways that diverse wildlife and plants respond to chemical exposures to identify critical pathways and processes most important to assess in a high throughput screening battery. BioSpyder’s TempO-Seq assay has proven to be highly efficient and cost effective in screening hundreds of thousands of samples through quickly customizable panels from a variety of species and inputs.
“This contract reflects the EPA’s high level of satisfaction with the TempO-Seq assay and services,” said Joel McComb, BioSpyder CEO. “This work with the EPA CCTE further establishes BioSpyder, and our TempO-Seq assay, as a leader in genetic toxicology screening. We are excited for the opportunity to expand our ecotoxicological business and further pursue global opportunities with industry and government.”
About the TempO-Seq Assay
TempO-Seq is a molecular profiling tool that allows for targeted gene expression analysis, designed to monitor hundreds to thousands of genes at once in high throughput. TempO-Seq can analyze expression in samples with thousands of cells or from single cells without pre-amplification, maximizing utilization of precious or limited samples. TempO-Seq has critical usability features, controls, and does not require specialized instrumentation.
In addition to saving costs in RNA purification, the targeted nature of TempO-Seq allows for extremely efficient and cost-effective sequencing. An automated probe design process allows users to target only genes of interest and TempO-Seq maximizes sequencing efficiency by sequencing only unique targets, not entire genes. Samples are pooled into libraries as large as 384 samples, which gives users the versatility to ensure samples receive the appropriate number of reads.
About BioSpyder Technologies, Inc.
BioSpyder is based in Carlsbad, California, and is a privately held company largely funded by government grants. BioSpyder is the developer of TempO-Seq. Through its U.K. (Glasgow) subsidiary BioClavis, BioSpyder is providing personalized cancer diagnostics services. BioSpyder Technologies was founded in 2011 by veteran molecular biology executives Joel McComb, Joanne Yeakley, Ph.D., and Bruce Seligmann, Ph.D. More information is available at www.biospyder.com.