RFP ANNOUNCEMENT: MOLECULAR LIBRARIES SMALL MOLECULE REPOSITORY RFP-RM-04-001 RELEASE DATE: December 23, 2003 NOTICE: NOT-RM-04-003 National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/) PROPOSAL RECEIPT DATE: March 2, 2004 DESCRIPTION The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is soliciting proposals from qualified businesses/organizations to establish, maintain/operate, and replenish the Small Molecule Repository. The Small Molecule Repository will be a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap Molecular Libraries initiative for the creation of an NIH small molecule library and screening centers (for additional information on the NIH Roadmap, see http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/). The Small Molecule Repository will offer public sector biomedical researchers access to small organic molecules that can be used as chemical probes to study cellular pathways in greater depth and will provide new ways to explore the functions of major components of the cell in health and disease. In order to provide these benefits, the library of small molecules must contain a sufficient number of diverse compounds to be screened for a large number of possible new activities and applications. To build such a library, a contract will be established to acquire, maintain, and distribute a collection of approximately 1,000,000 chemically diverse small molecules of both known and unknown activities. An NIH Molecular Libraries Coordinating Committee and an external scientific advisory group will help identify candidate compounds to be acquired from government, academic, industry and commercial sources. Over time, this collection will be expanded and modified to include compounds that are capable of interacting with an increasing number and diversity of biomolecular target domains. The development of such libraries will provide probes for studying molecular events, pathways, and networks in biologic systems that span the scale from single cells to whole organisms. Requirements for the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository include the following tasks: 1) Compound Identification and Library Development. The contractor, in coordination with the NIH Molecular Libraries Coordinating Committee and an external scientific advisory group, shall identify candidate compounds from government, academic, industry and commercial sources, and acquire a collection of approximately 1,000,000 compounds meeting criteria to be specified by the Government Project Officer (GPO)/Coordinating Committee (i.e., stability, solubility, availability of sufficient quantities, ease of re-supply or re- synthesis, diversity). 2) Handling, Plating and Distribution. All compounds shall be bar-coded and arrayed in sets suitable for supplying to high-throughput screening (HTS) facilities. The contractor shall have the capability to array compounds into both 96 and 384 well plates to produce arrays in formats suitable for long term storage and distribution. The contractor shall also have the ability to produce arrays in other formats suitable for distribution (i.e., daughter-plates developed from plate replication or reformatting into higher density 1536 or 3456 well plates). Compound arrays shall be distributed to the Molecular Library Screening Centers and other interested HTS facilities. The contractor shall also provide arrays of compounds to investigators on a fee for service basis. 3) Storage. The contractor shall provide dry storage of compounds as well as storage of compounds in solution. Compounds shall be stored under conditions that ensure optimal stability and purity. The contractor shall provide the necessary expertise, equipment, and facilities to store, maintain, and track the compound collection inventory. The contractor shall monitor the stability of compounds in the library (e.g., analysis by LC/MS, HPLC, and/or NMR). 4) Re-supply and Re-synthesis. The contractor shall monitor the compound inventory to ensure that sufficient quantities of all compounds (typically between 5 and 30mg) are available to support screening needs. As compounds become depleted the Contractor shall purchase sufficient quantities of the compound to replenish the inventory. The Contractor shall have the ability to synthesize, at a minimum purity of 90%, sufficient quantities of depleted compounds that cannot be re- purchased. 5) Informatics. The Contractor shall provide the necessary informatics support to track compound inventory and distribution, including maintenance of a compound collection inventory database and a shipping and distribution database. The contractor shall create and maintain a repository website, describing the program and providing a list of available compound arrays. The contractor shall also have the capability of interfacing any repository informatics systems with other Molecular Libraries databases and informatics systems. 6) Confidentiality. The contractor may be acquiring and handling some proprietary compounds under this contract. In order to acquire such compounds, the suppliers may require their rights to inventions using these materials be fully protected. Therefore, the NIMH may request, as specified in FAR 27.303, a deviation for this contract from the standard patent rights clause, FAR 52.227-11, Patent Rights Retention by the Contractor (Short Form) (June 1997), which if approved would restrict the Contractor's rights in subject inventions involving such proprietary compounds. Public comments shall be solicited in the Federal Business Opportunities (as a Special Notice) and also in the solicitation for this contract, before a deviation is requested. The NIMH anticipates the award of one (1) contract for a base period of approximately 52 months, plus five (5) one-year options. RFP No. RM-04-0001 will be available electronically on or about December 29, 2003. You can access the RFP through the FedBizOpps (URL: http://www.fedbizopps.gov), through the NIH Roadmap Grants and Funding Opportunities website (URL: http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/grants/index.asp), or through the NIMH website (URL: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/grants/indexcon.cfm#RequestforProposal). Please note that NIMH uses the streamlined RFP format that includes only the statement of work, deliverables, reporting requirements, any special requirements, mandatory qualifications (if any), technical evaluation criteria, and other necessary proposal preparation instructions. All information required for the submission of a proposal is contained in or accessible through the streamlined RFP package. Response to the RFP will be due on or about March 1, 2004. NIMH will consider proposals submitted by any responsible offeror. This advertisement does not commit the government to award a contract. Contracting Office Address: Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health National Institute of Mental Health Contract Management Branch 6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 8155, MSC 9661 Bethesda, MD 20892-9661 Rockville, MD 20852 (for express/courier service) Point of Contact: Bruce E. Anderson, Contracting Officer, Voice: (301) 443-2234, Fax: (301) 443-0501 Email: ba9i@nih.gov


Weekly TOC for this Announcement
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices



NIH Office of Extramural Research Logo
  Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - Home Page Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS)
  USA.gov - Government Made Easy
NIH... Turning Discovery Into Health®



Note: For help accessing PDF, RTF, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Audio or Video files, see Help Downloading Files.