Definitive Contract 75N95026C00006

The National Institute on Drug Abuse awarded a $19.9M definitive cost-no-fee contract to the University of Pittsburgh to establish and operate the NIH NeuroRioBank Brain and Tissue Repository, a collection site that will actively acquire, process, store, curate, preserve, and distribute central nervous system and related tissues for research purposes. The contract, which runs through October 31, 2030, supports the broader NIH initiative to increase availability of post-mortem human brain tissue for neurological, psychiatric, and neurodevelopmental disorder research. Under the solicitation (75N95024R00124), the University of Pittsburgh must demonstrate capability to acquire at least 70 donors annually with potential to process up to 150 unique human donors per year, ensuring demographic diversity across race, ethnicity, and age groups, including individuals with various neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders as well as those with no known brain disorders.

The contract operates under full and open competition with no set-aside designation and requires the contractor to document and maintain inventory through the NIH NeuroRioBank Portal while participating in tissue sharing under NIH NeuroRioBank guidelines. This represents part of a larger multiple-award strategy coordinated across several NIH institutes, including the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, and National Institute on Aging, to establish multiple collection sites nationwide. The University of Pittsburgh's established infrastructure for biomedical research and prior experience providing postmortem brain tissue samples position it to support this critical research initiative spanning the five-year performance period.