The U.S. federal government has recently awarded several notable contracts related to the field of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defense or life science research of interest for potential applications in biodefense:
Federal Resources Supply Company was awarded a $1,025,537.60 Firm Fixed Price Contract for Proengin AP4C Detector kits used to detect chemical warfare agent and toxic industrial chemicals, with extra warranty & service contract. Each kit comes with the detector, batteries, hydrogen consumable, and one SP4E liquid sampler all packaged in a pelican case.
Perkin Elmer Health Sciences, Inc. is being awarded a sole source purchase order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Laboratory Sciences (DLS) Emergency Response Branch within the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) for Sciclone G3 20/24 Position Desk Systems.
The Sciclone G3 20/24 Position Desk System will be used for rapid, automated sample preparation to facilitate method development and sample analysis of toxic compounds in biological matrices. Additionally, Sciclone G3 20/24 Position Desk System will provide for liquid handling automation providing an invaluable step in biomonitoring method development, specifically for analytes used in chemical terrorism. The G3 Sciclone will provide reliable automated liquid handling with minimum input by the user. This will allow for rapid and reproducible sample preparation a critical need for emergency response method development. Source: FBO.gov
Pacific Biosciences is being awarded a sole source contract for the PacBio RS II Sequencer System from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Office of Acquisition (OA) on behalf of the National Human Genome Research Institute, (NHGRI).
The National Human Genome Research Institute NHGRI), NIH Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC) is a high-throughput sequencing center supporting all institutes within the NIH. NISC has served the NIH community for over 15 years as a source for high-quality large-scale sequencing and analysis.
“As next generation sequencing applications expand, so does the demand for NISC services. NISC currently has one (1) HiSeq 25000, three (3) MiSeq Systems, and four (4) HiSeq 2000 Systems which are proven platforms for genetic analysis and functional genomics. However these instruments provide a maximum read length of 300 bases,” states the announcement. “Complex genomes cannot be de novo assembled into one piece with reads of this length. Typically even small microbial genomes are in 50-300 pieces even with 100x coverage.”
Source: FBO.gov
