Ecotox Challenge to develop approaches to measure gene transcriptional responses to chemicals in ecotox target species
In 2020, EPA announced a partnership with DoD, international governments, and industry to sponsor the EcoTox TARGET innovation challenge. The challenge awarded $300,000 to the applicant who successfully developed a low-cost high-throughput technology for measuring global gene expression in samples from four common aquatic toxicity test organisms. The winner, BioSpyder Technologies, Inc., was announced in spring 2022. An abstract describing the challenge and outcome (Villeneuve et al.) has been accepted for a poster presentation at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology general meeting in February 2024. There are no plans to repeat the challenge in the foreseeable future but research to apply the technology is ongoing.