WASHINGTON (March 25, 2022) - Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced BioSpyder Technologies, Inc. won the EcoTox Target Challenge, an international competition to develop and demonstrate high-quality, low-cost technologies to help screen chemicals for ecological hazards. BioSpyder earned the prize of $300,000.
“BioSpyder’s biotechnology, developed in response to this challenge, is ready to be used by EPA to more rapidly evaluate biological effects uniquely relevant to ecosystem health, such as disruption of photosynthesis in plants or molting in invertebrates,” said Chris Frey, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science Policy in EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “This innovative chemical screening technology will enable EPA and others to obtain data representative of plant and animal diversity, which will better inform effective approaches to protecting the environment.”
The Challenge addressed the need for high-quality, low-cost technologies to evaluate global gene expression in samples from four organisms frequently used to assess aquatic toxicity. These technologies provide a foundation for on-going development of innovative methods for evaluating the ecological hazards of chemicals at a cost and scale that allows analysis of thousands to tens of thousands of samples per year.
EPA, in partnership with Syngenta, Dow, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and the European Commission Joint Research Centre, launched the EcoTox Target Challenge in January 2020.