Request for Proposal (RFP) Notice: NIH Protein Capture Reagent Validation

Notice Number: NOT-HL-16-313

Key Dates
Release Date: April 6, 2016

Related Announcements
none

Issued by
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

Purpose

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) on behalf of the NIH Common Fund Office, the National Human Genomic Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) (collectively, the Government) plans to solicit proposals under full and open competition procedures to conduct an independent, third party assessment of protein affinity reagents produced by the NIH Common Fund's Protein Capture Reagents Program (PCRP).

The Protein Capture Reagent Program (PCRP) of the NIH Common Fund (https://commonfund.nih.gov/proteincapture/index) is a pilot program aimed to develop, optimize and scale production of renewable protein affinity reagents at a proteomic level for use in biomedical research and clinical applications. The major component of this program is to produce high-quality, high-utility affinity reagents against all human transcription factors (hTFs) as a test set of proteins. Deliverables from the production centers of the program include generation of hTFs as target antigens and the corresponding generation of affinity reagents in monoclonal (mAb) or phage display recombinant Fab (rAb) form.

Because of the well-known difficulties with the reliability of commercially-available antibodies, an independent, third party assessment of the reagents could provide needed additional confidence for community adoption of these reagents. Particularly important attributes of this third party assessment not covered in previous validations are: 1) the assays will test the utility of the reagents at native expression levels, 2) the assays will use reagents from the same sources as available to the typical end-user in the community, and 3) the assays will be developed and conducted with the intention of publishing the results and analyses in a peer-reviewed journal.

The services to be performed under this requirement include the following:
1) validate a prioritized subset of up to 460 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) using an appropriate sampling of current distributors listed on the PCRP data portal (https://proteincapture.org);
2) validate up to 20 recombinant antibodies (rAbs) from the Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB) distributor;
3) use a subset of up to 20 rAb plasmids from DNASU to develop a general Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for preparing purified rAbs, and validate up to 20 rAbs;
4) deposit all validation data (positive, negative, or non-result) on the PCRP data portal;
5) sequence all the rAb plasmids available in the DNASU and deposit sequence data in the PCRP data portal;

6) sequence all mAb variable regions having positive validation results and deposit the sequence data in the PCRP data portal; and
7) analyze and publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal. Validation results should also be included as supplemental data.

In accordance with FAR Subpart 9.5 Organizational and Consultant Conflicts of Interests, to maximize the utility of the reagents, the government intends to contract with an independent third party to perform validation services on the reagents that were produced under the grants. An independent third party is required to provide additional confidence of reagent quality for community adoption of these reagents.

The Government anticipates awarding one cost-reimbursement completion type contract with a period of performance of two years beginning around February 2017. The contract will contain options for an increased level of effort to support assessment of additional affinity reagents. The Government may exercise the option for additional reagents several times over the two year period of performance. This acquisition has been designated as full and open competition under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 541711.

This announcement is not a Request for Proposals (RFP) and the Government is not committed to award a contract pursuant to this announcement. The RFP will be available on or about April 1, 2016 at the FedBizOpps website at www.fbo.gov. Prospective offerors are responsible for downloading the RFP and any/all attachments. The Offeror is responsible for monitoring the FedBizOpps Web page for the release of the solicitation and any amendments. The estimated due date for proposal submission is on or about May 16, 2016. The RFP No. will be HHS-NIH-NHLBI-HG-2017-06-IM.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Lynn Furtaw
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Telephone: 301-435-0330
Email: lynn.furtaw@nih.gov