1.5406977_Robot_PD.pdf

PURCHASE DESCRIPTION

1. Statement of Need and Purpose:

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Division of Preclinical Innovation (DPI) requires a mobile robot. This equipment shall be used to support novel assay development and validation screening.

2. Background Information and Objective:

NCATS is in need of a mobile robot to be able to automatically integrate systems that were not intended or not capable of being integrated in a traditional fashion. The mission of the Automation and Compound Management (ACOMM) and ADST labs in NCATS is to is to apply the tools of small molecule screening and discovery to the development of chemical probe research tools, for use in the study of protein and cell functions, and biological processes relevant to physiology and disease.

Various programs and labs within NCATS have been given the directive to perform different types of high throughput screens to evaluate some biological activity and to potentially develop new therapeutics or therapeutic combinations in some cases or in others to determine the relative toxicity of chemical compounds under test. To do this, a biological experiment is performed in the presence of hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds at various concentrations, requiring that millions of samples be tested for each experiment. This requires that these experiments be run in a high density well plate, to both minimize the total reagent volume used per experiment and to facilitate less total plates to be used to perform an entire assay. Typically, one experiment might consist of screening 500,000 compounds at 5 different total concentrations for a total of 2.5M samples. If this experiment is run using a 1536 well plate, meaning 1536 samples can be tested at a time, this requires nearly 1650 plates. The only way to accomplish handling this many well plates for an experiment is high throughput screening (HTS), which requires a high degree of robotic automation.

Over the past 10 years, NCATS has made a substantial investment in HTS systems, spending over $20M in automated equipment to run these experiments. The two most active systems at the center are the Kalypsys Primary Screening system that was put into service in 2005 (contract HHSN27320040004C) and the Tox21 Robotic Screening system that was put into service in 2011. As time has gone on, we have acquired additional equipment to better intergrate and automate more of our processes. We require a mobile robot capable of effectively integrating multiple systems, which have various functional and logistical constraints. Implementation of the mobile robot will improve efficiency and productivity by saving us considerable time and resources, and as such is highly beneficial to the government.

3. Generic Name of Product: Mobile Robot

4. Purchase Description:

Mobile autonomous robot to integrate multiple laboratory systems

5. Salient characteristics:

The configuration and functional requirements of this standalone system include the following:

- This is a commercial, non-developmental item.

- The robot must consist of commercial off-the-shelf components.

- The robot must include a robotic arm or arms integrated with an autonomous ground vehicle.

- The robotic must be able to place and retrieve empty and loaded racks from automated laboratory sample preparation equipment, such as the Sirius Automation OmniTasker (reaching in one position) and the Hettich CombiDancer (reaching out and down four positions):

o The robot arm must be able to extend at least 2 feet, at heights between 2 and 4 feet off the floor;

o The robot arm must be able to both reach straight out into front-loading equipment and to reach out and down into top loading equipment;

o The racks to be retrieved may be aluminum or plastic and contain either glass vials or Matrix tubes filled with various compound solutions. A fully loaded rack may weigh up to 2kg

- The robot must include camera system that will allow remote visual monitoring.

- Robot must be self-contained and be able to travel up to 11 feet from its parking spot.

- The robot must directly integrate with Green Button Go (GBG) scheduling software used in the high-throughput screening system.

- The offered system must be complete, i.e. it must include all components for installation and operation (such as charging dock, joystick, cables, control interface, etc.)

Offers will also be evaluated on:

- Ease of integration (physical and software);

- Availability of installation, training, and support;

- Estimated time for delivery from date of order;

- Estimated time to full operation from date/time of delivery;

- Offeror’s experience in providing robots for laboratory integration.

6. Delivery Date:

Approximately 6 – 12 weeks ARO

7. Period of Performance:

One-Time Delivery-Equipment

8. Options: N/A