BioFire Defense announced this week that it was awarded the Next Generation Diagnostic System (NGDS) Technology Development contract by the US Department of Defense (DoD) after 12 months of competitive prototyping.
The 8 year $240M biodefense program is managed by the Joint Program Executive Office’s Medical Countermeasure Systems (JPEO MCS) office. The NGDS program will expand BioFire’s FilmArray diagnostic menu by developing Biothreat test capabilities for use across all four branches of the DoD.
“This is a fantastic opportunity to deliver the most cutting edge diagnostic system to our Warfighter,” said Kirk Ririe, CEO of BioFire Defense. “The motivated team at JPEO has pushed an aggressive schedule and a cost effective approach that will be met by exploiting our FilmArray’s commercial diagnostic capabilities, to provide for our Nation’s biodefense and improve DoD health care.”
The NGDS program will develop and deliver the new standard of biowarfare detection to the US Department of Defense, replacing the current Joint Biologic Agent Identification and Diagnostic System (JBAIDS). With the dual role FilmArray platform, the DoD will be able to detect bioterror pathogens, as well as run the full suite of diagnostic test panels available for the system, including Respiratory and Blood Culture test panels. Other options in the contract include additional test panel development and platform hardening for improved ruggedness.
BioFire Defense, LLC, formerly Idaho Technology, Inc., is a subsidiary of bioMerieux Inc. (Durham, NC) and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
