The Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC) is a well-established community of industry, academia, and government focused on rapid prototyping and maturing medical countermeasures to prevent, detect and treat exposure to CBRN threats. Through an Other Transaction Agreement with the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND), the MCDC is developing life-saving medical pharmaceutical, diagnostics and therapeutics to safe-guard and enhance the mission effectiveness of Servicemembers.
The MCDC regularly updates its membership in keeping with provisions of the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993. The most recent disclosure was published on 6 Feb 2024 in the Federal Register.
The notifications are filed for the purpose of invoking the Act’s provisions limiting the recovery of antitrust plaintiffs to actual damages under specified circumstances. It is the purpose of this Act to promote innovation, facilitate trade, and strengthen the competitiveness of the United States in world markets by clarifying the applicability of the rule of reason standard and establishing a procedure under which businesses may notify the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission of their cooperative ventures and thereby qualify for a single-damages limitation on civil antitrust liability.
The Act encourages the use of collaborative, procompetitive activity in the form of research and production joint ventures that provide adequate disclosure to the antitrust enforcement agencies about the nature and scope of the activity involved.
MCDC membership is limited to US companies or US-based affiliates of foreign companies. Foreign companies cannot gain membership due to MCDC’s member requirement to obtain a DD2345 (military critical technical data agreement).
The Latest Changes to MCDC Membership
There are currently 304 members listed on the MCDC website, a mix of small and large companies, academic and non-profit organizations.
The following companies have been added as parties to this venture in the most recent update:
- ARServices Limited, Falls Church, VA
- DKW Consulting LLC, Tallahassee, FL
- GW Medical Systems Information Technologies Inc dba GE HealthCare Technology & Innovation Center, Niskayuna, NY
- Goldbelt Hawk LLC, Newport News, VA
- Sentio BioSciences LLC, Maryland Heights, MO
MCDC also announced the following parties have withdrawn membership from the Consortium:
- Clarifia Inc, New York, NY
- Conductive Technologies Inc, York, PA
- Government Scientific Source, Reston, VA
- Kleo Pharmaceuticals, New Haven, CT
- Locus Biosciences, Morrisville, NC
- Pertexa Healthcare Technologies, Ridgecrest, CA
- SX2 Technologies LLC, Port Washington, WI
- Trauma Insight LLC dba LumaBridge LLC, San Antonio, TX
Who Joined the MCDC in the Last Round of Updates?
The prior notification filed with the Federal Trade Commission was on 12 Oct 2023, and published in the Federal Register on 15 Dec 2023.
In this update, the following entities joined the MCDC venture:
- Compleo Technologies LLC, Newtown, CT
- Core4ce LLC, Reston, VA
- KRI at Northeastern University LLC, Burlington, MA
- North American Rescue LLC, Greer, SC
Parties listed as withdrawing from the venture on the 15 Dec 2023 public notice:
- Alltropic Tech, Halethorpe, MD
- California Institute for Biomedical Research, La Jolla, CA
- GenArraytion Inc., Rockville, MD
- Integrated Biotherapeutics, Inc., Rockville, MD
- International Business Machines Corp., Yorktown Heights, NY
- Luna Labs USA LLC, Charlottesville, VA
- Mesa Tech International, San Diego, CA
- Qorvo Biotechnologies LLC, Bend, OR
- Sentinel Analytics Software, Inc., Davis, CA
- SGSD Partners LLC, Washington, DC
- Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, Inc., La Jolla, CA
- Unify R&D, Elkridge, MD
- Vector RX LLC, Elkridge, MD
Membership in this group research project remains open, and MCDC intends to file additional written notifications disclosing all changes in membership.
The MCDC will co-host a Winter Medical & WMD Countermeasure Symposium on 20-21 February, 2024.