36C24E22Q0193.docx

Special Notice Special Notice

GENERAL INFORMATION

Veterans Health Administration Regional Procurement Office (RPO) East 323 North Shore Drive, Suite 500 Pittsburgh PA 15212-5319

POINT OF CONTACT*

Lynn.Portman@va.gov Lynn M Portman lynn.portman@va.gov

(412) 822-3442

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

AGENCY’S URL

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DESCRIPTION

The Department of Veterans Affairs, Charleston VA, intends to negotiate on a sole source basis, pursuant to FAR 6.302-1, with Noldus., for the Rat Automated Behavioral and Physiological System to include the EthoVision XT and PhenoTyper home cage monitoring systems. This is the only commercially available automated rat behavioral and physiological assessment system that meets research needs for the definedstandard of behavioral research for rodents, including rats, and enables automated, objective, reproducible analyses of a multitude of behaviors and physiological measures in rodents, including: rat activity, anxiety, spatial learning and memory, cognitive ability, fear conditioning, and general behaviors such as rearing, grooming, eating, etc., as well as physiological measures such as temperature, blood pressure, biopotential, and activity via implantable telemetry devices. The EthoVision XT platform, offered exclusively by Noldus Information Technology, enables objective, automated analyses for rat behavior and physiology. This software allows for automated detection of rat movement, batch recording and analyses. Further, it offers the ability to track multiple arenas simultaneously, ability to track multiple body points including rat nose, center point, and tail base automatically, ability to track and analyze multiple rats in a single arena, ability to integrate with external hardware components such as lighting, tone sounds, running wheels, feeding devices, drinking devices, cognition test walls, and telemetry devices. In concert with implantable telemetry devices and the Ponemah Telemetry software, this system allows for the collection of physiological parameters, including blood pressure, biopotential, activity, and temperature in each rat, as well as behavioral data. Furthermore, Noldus Information Technology is the only manufacturer of Phenotypers, which are specialized devices made to look like the rat’s home cage, equipped with high-speed cameras and external devices to automatically measure and assess overall activity, eating and drinking behaviors, as well as general behaviors such as grooming, rearing, and sleeping, among others. Futhermore, these systems integrate with optogenetics for very specialized neurobiological studies investigating specific neuron activity in conjunction with recorded behaviors. Only this Noldus Equipment/Software can provide:

-Only Noldus provides the central software EthoVision XT (perpetual licenses) which provides automated experimental setup and analyses with the following equipment in rat behavioral research:

- Open Field Arenas

- Dry Morris Water Maze

- Elevated Plus Maze

- Y Maze

- Forced Swim Cylinders

- Elevated Zero Maze

- Fear Conditioning Systems

- PhenoTyper 9000 Systems

- PhenoTyper4500 and PhenoTyper3000 Systems with Sylics Protocols (AHCODA)

- DSI Telemetry System

- Color GigE cameras

- Dedicated workstations

This is a notice of intent and is not a request for competitive quotes; however, any responsible source who can provide an equivalent with the same salient characteristics may submit a capability statement to the contracting office no later than June 28th, 7AM, EST. Interest/capability statements may be sent to Lynn Portman at lynn.portman@va.gov. No telephone responses will be accepted. A determination not to compete the proposed requirement based upon the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.

-Only EthoVision XT provides all of the following modules, which can be combined on a single license and offer functionality in the types of behavioral observation below:

-Only EthoVision XT provides social interaction tracking of more than one subject in an arena (up to 16). This capability is necessary for behavioral tasks involving more than one animal, in the open field arena, for example.

-Only Noldus provides PhenoTyper home cage monitoring systems which provide automated data on animal drinking, eating, exercise, sleeping, grooming, rearing, etc. behaviors simultaneously with video monitoring and advanced analysis tools in one, integrated system.

-Only Noldus has a partnership with Sylics on AHCODA protocols to provide in conjunction with their PhenoTyper cages that allow for discrimination learning and reversal learning tasks within the PhenoTyper home cage.

-Only Noldus provides advanced animal detection utilizing video tracking with deep learning technology for body point detection; using trained neural networks, it detects nose point, center, and tail base of rats (and mice) with high accuracy and stability, for top-in-class video tracking results. This tracking makes every behavioral assessment (listed above) more accurate and reliable, and comparable between groups; this is essential for high-quality behavioral research. Importantly, detection settings can be personalized for accurate rodent tracking of multiple coat colors (C57BL/6 mice, hooded rats, Long-Evans rats, agouti mice, etc.).

-Only Noldus software has the ability to integrate with nVue Imaging System by Inscopix, which collects behavioral data (EthoVision) plus neural network data (Inscopix software) to enable simultaneous collection of neural activity data and behavioral data from the same small animal. This will allow simultaneous capture of high-quality behavior and calcium imaging movies in a single session, which cannot be provided by any other platform. Our research program includes investigators utilizing neural calcium-imaging systems (using multiple systems including nVue), and only Noldus Information Technology offers a fully integratible behavioral software (EthoVision) to allow simultaneous brain imaging and behavioral data collection.

-Additionally, only this Noldus package ability to integrate with equipment and software (EthoVision XT) previously acquired in the Mouse Integrated Behavioral and Physiological Assessment Core.

This is a notice of intent and is not a request for competitive quotes; however, any responsible source who can provide an equivalent product with these features described above may submit a capability statement to the contracting office no later than July 29th, 7am, EST. Interest/capability statements may be sent to Lynn Portman at lynn.portman@va.gov. No telephone responses will be accepted. A determination not to compete the proposed requirement based upon the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.

Special Notice