The Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) is seeking partners to develop an Automated Universal Biological Sample Processing System (UBSPS).
For confirmatory identification of biological threat agents collected from various biological early warning technologies, an automated, universal biological sample processing system is needed that can simultaneously isolate and purify nucleic acids and prepare proteins for downstream analyses.
ECBC is seeking to partner with industry or academia to fill this gap by combining the latest developments in biological sample preparation, automation, miniaturization, and integration techniques.
ECBC and the Joint Project Manager Nuclear Biological Chemical and Contamination Avoidance (JPMNBC-CA) are interested in interfacing the proposed UBSPS with biological early warning consortium detection systems.
The system should be able to:
- Efficiently lyse environmental microbial samples
- Isolate the released biomolecules
- Filter out interference compounds and particulates
- Preconcentrate and separate nucleic acids from proteins
- Perform enzymatic cleavage of proteins for potential downstream mass spec analyses
- Purify nucleic acids isolated onboard
The outputs from the UBSPS would then be analyzed using genomic and proteomic based techniques for confirmatory identification of biological threat agents.
ECBC will use any information submitted to identify potential collaborators that have expertise in biological sample processing, automation, and miniaturization, including development of components or of whole sample processing systems.
Further details are available via Solicitation Number: UBSPS-RFI-72815. The response deadline is September 30, 2015.
