BioSpyder Awarded 5-Year EPA Contract With a Maximum Value of $25 Million to Perform High-Throughput Genetic Toxicology Screening

CARLSBAD, Calif., July 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 over prior contracts, reflecting the EPA's commitment to using new approach methods to evaluate chemicals and a high level of satisfaction with BioSpyder'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 (ToxCasttm). 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 hundreds of thousands 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 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 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 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Computational Toxicology a five-year contract that has a maximum total contract value of USD 25 million. This contract is the latest in a series of contracts awarded to BioSpyder from the EPA for HTT research since 2015. Two other contracts were awarded to BioSpyder by this organization, one for $5 million and the other for $10 million, and have been fully utilized and successfully fulfilled.

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 diagnostics services. BioClavis leverages the BioSpyder TempO-Seq® platform technology for precision diagnostics and drug discovery. BioSpyder Technologies was founded in 2011 by veteran molecular biology executives Joel McComb, Joanne Yeakley, Ph.D., and Bruce Seligmann, Ph.D. More information about BioSpyder Technologies is available at www.biospyder.com.

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