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Caliper Life Sciences Awarded EPA Contract for Multi-Year, Multi-Million Dollar Tox Program
Caliper Discovery Alliances & Services Unit to Test Environmental Chemicals

10 Apr 2007 - Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. announced that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a contract to NovaScreen Biosciences, the in vitro discovery services arm of Caliper Discovery Alliances and Services (CDAS), to assist the agency in developing new approaches to identify toxic environmental chemicals. The contract award, which was anticipated by Caliper, will range from $1.4 to $69 million over the course of two to five years. The specific dollar value within this range will be based primarily upon the volume of testing requested by the EPA and the availability of funds for future years.
 
As part of the EPA's ToxCast research program, CDAS will utilize biochemical and cellular assays, validated in the pharmaceutical drug discovery industry, to help predict how chemicals such as pesticides will interact with the environment, humans and animals. CDAS will leverage its state-of-the-art screening tools and its proprietary Side-Effect Database (SED), representing screening results from 2,300 compounds tested against more than 70 biological targets, to provide comprehensive laboratory testing and analysis services across a broad range of specific protein targets of interest to the EPA.