Caliper Life Sciences' CDAS unit awarded new funding commitment for EPA ToxCast screening program

Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: CALP), a leading provider of tools and services for drug discovery and life sciences research, today announced that its Caliper Discovery Alliances and Services (CDAS) unit has been awarded a new funding commitment for $2.9 million under its contract with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the EPA's ToxCast screening program.  Together with an initial Phase II task order awarded in November 2009, this new task order increases the cumulative funding Caliper has been awarded under Phase II of the ToxCast program to $4.7 million.  

"This latest EPA task order improves the visibility we have for achieving our CDAS unit revenue projections in the second half of 2010, and should provide us good momentum into 2011," commented Kevin Hrusovsky, President and CEO of Caliper.

The long term goal of the EPA's ToxCast program is to identify in vitro assays that can predict the toxicity of chemical compounds in humans and animals, by comparing the results of in vitro testing conducted by Caliper and others with the toxicity data in the EPA's in vivo toxicity database, ToxRefDB, and then to employ those predictive tests to supplement or replace existing animal-based tests reducing cost and improving the speed of regulatory approval of new environmental chemicals.

"Phase II of the ToxCast program will involve screening another 700 environmental compounds through a wide set of assays. We expect to begin the Phase II effort within the next several months after the Phase II compound library is delivered to us by the EPA," commented David Manyak, Executive Vice President, Drug Discovery Services. "Our work with the EPA is a strong validation of our services and the industry is taking notice. We have seen increased interest from the pharmaceutical, chemical, and cosmetic industries in CDAS commercial services based on in vitro toxicology assays represented in the ToxCast panel."