BioReliance Gets Screening Contract from EPA

BioReliance has been awarded a contract under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Computational Toxicology Research Program called ToxCast. This contract for the testing of high throughput complex cell co-culture systems encompasses genetic toxicology screening of environmental chemicals for potential toxicity.

In the initial scope of this contract, BioReliance will test 1,000 chemicals under Phase II of the Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCast) program. These chemicals come from a broad range of sources, including industrial and consumer products, food additives and drugs, that have been compiled under the Tox 21 collaboration between the EPA, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences/National Toxicology Program, National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH Chemical Genomics Center and the Food and Drug Administration. The contract between BioReliance and the EPA includes the option to expand the program over the course of five years and test as many as 10,000 chemicals.

“BioReliance has long employed various compound screening methods to understand mechanism of action and predict potential human hazard,” said Robert Young, global toxicology technical specialist at the company. “BioReliance welcomes the opportunity to utilize our experience and expertise to effectively predict how chemicals will affect biological responses. The data generated from our innovative chemical testing methods will be combined with data from other screening methodologies to enable the EPA to make risk-assessments of many chemicals that have not previously been well characterized.”