How do we demonstrate the safety of biocontrols, in ways that truly reflect their biological nature, from toxicology to degradation and environmental fate, using evidence that’s relevant to how they actually behave?
Most biocontrols don’t act like conventional chemicals. They can operate locally, interact with their environment at the microscale, and are often broken down by common natural biological processes. Yet they’re often assessed using test systems designed for persistent synthetic molecules.
For many biocontrols, especially peptides and RNA-based products, traditional concepts like metabolism simply don’t apply.
These molecules are built from the same amino acids and nucleotides found in every living organism. When they degrade, they return to those same building blocks, no novel metabolites, no unexpected transformation products, no xenobiotic residues.
Structure matters, too.
For peptides, biological activity depends entirely on their final, folded 3D shape, the mature conformation that allows them to bind specifically to a receptor or target site. Once that shape is lost, so is their function.
Degradation doesn’t produce a 'metabolite'; it produces inactivity. What remains are harmless amino acids, short peptides, or nucleotides, indistinguishable from the biological background of life itself.
That changes what safety means.
The key question isn’t “What does it turn into?” but “How long does it stay intact and active?”
For RNA and peptide biocontrols, this means measuring stability and degradation kinetics, not chasing chemical metabolites.
The challenge isn’t to avoid testing, it’s to generate evidence that matters: genomics, metabolomics, and mechanistic studies that reveal how these agents behave and how quickly they lose biological function.
It’s about relevance, not reduction.
At Blue Frog Scientific, we help applicants design evidence packages that satisfy today’s regulators, while pointing toward the smarter, biology-based framework we’ll need tomorrow.
Where do you see the biggest opportunity to make safety testing more relevant for biologicals?
