BioFire Diagnostics, Inc. this week announced that it has signed a competitive prototyping contract with the Department of the Army for Increment 1 of the Next Generation Diagnostics System (NGDS) Program.
NGDS is being developed by the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense (JPEO-CBD), Chemical Biological Medical Systems Biosurveillance (CBMS-BSV) to provide an FDA-cleared diagnostic system for the analysis of clinical and environmental biological warfare agent samples. The system will provide military healthcare providers with timely and accurate information to guide individual patient treatment as well as provide battlefield commanders with biological threat information for situational awareness to support force protection.
For Increment 1, BioFire will develop a panel utilizing their proprietary FilmArray Stystem that will be optimized to detect biothreat agents in blood or environmental samples. The FilmArray System will be evaluated during the Competitive Prototyping Phase and if selected, BioFire will receive a final contract to be awarded later in the year for further system development and obtaining FDA clearance for the panel.
“BioFire has a history of successful developmental efforts with the United States Department of Defense, most notably with the JBAIDS program, and we are excited for this opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of the FilmArray,” stated Kirk Ririe, Chief Executive Officer of BioFire Diagnostics.