DARPA-SN-24-70.pdf

Special Notice (SN) DARPA-SN-24-70: Switch Proposers Day

DATE: Friday, June 7, 2024 LOCATION: Virtual REGISTRATION WEBSITE: https://events.sa-meetings.com/SwitchProposersDay REGISTRATION DEADLINE: Tuesday, June 4, 2024, at 4:00 PM EDT or when capacity is reached, whichever comes first.

TECHNICAL POC: Dr. Matthew Pava, DARPA/BTO Email: Switch@darpa.mil

The Biological Technologies Office (BTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting a virtual Proposers Day for the potential proposer community in support of an anticipated Program Solicitation (PS) for the Switch program. The Proposers Day will be held on Friday, June 7, 2024, by webcast for remote participation. Advance registration is required.

Registrants will have the opportunity to provide teaming profiles and give a short oral presentation.

There are a limited number of timeslots for oral presentations, so they must be scheduled upon registration on a first come first served basis. Note, all times listed in this announcement and on the registration website are Eastern Daylight Time.

The goals of the Proposers Day include:

1. To introduce the scientific community (industry, academia, and government) to the Switch program vision and goals;

2. To explain the general mechanics of a DARPA program and the specific objectives and milestones of this program;

3. Increase efficiency in proposal preparation and evaluation; and

4. To encourage and promote teaming arrangements among organizations with the expertise, research facilities, and capabilities needed to execute research and development responsive to Switch program goals.

DARPA anticipates releasing the Switch PS in June 2024. If released, the PS will be available on https://sam.gov/ and http://www.grants.gov/. Following Proposers Day Day, DARPA may post the presented materials and the list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to the Opportunities page at DARPA’s website.

It is expected that Switch will require strong teaming efforts to successfully innovate and integrate critical technologies necessary to meet the metrics (and associated timelines) of the Switch program. The Proposers Day will include brief overview presentations by government personnel and lightning talks (1 slide, 3 minutes) for potential proposers to highlight technical capabilities and promote teaming. DARPA will collect participant questions throughout the event and publish answers to a publicly available FAQ document.

To maximize the pool of innovative proposal concepts, DARPA strongly encourages participation in these events and subsequent solicitations by non-traditional performers, including small and medium-sized businesses, as well as academic and research institutions, including first-time government contractors. Attendance at this event is not a requirement for submission of a proposal or selection for funding. Information relayed during the Proposers Day will be made available on https://events.sa-meetings.com/SwitchProposersDay mailto:Switcheroo@darpa.mil https://sam.gov/ http://www.grants.gov/ the BTO section of the DARPA Opportunities page: http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities.

Program Objective:

The Switch program will test the hypothesis that biomanufacturing platforms can be engineered to enable run-time reprogramming of cellular metabolism to toggle between different chemical synthesis operations. By engineering run-time reprogrammable platforms, Switch will enable new concepts of operation (CONOPS) for biomanufacturing that provide novel capabilities for national security. Specifically, such a reprogrammable system would enable (1) “opportunistic consumption” by switching between feedstocks, (2) “need-driven manufacturing” by switching between different products, (3) “co-opting capacity” by temporarily and reversibly adapting existing biomanufacturing platforms, and (4) “long-term stability” for continuous production.

These platforms will optimize economic resilience and facilitates crisis response.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) currently relies on petrochemicals as the source of organic (carbon-containing) molecules required for virtually every aspect of DoD operations including energetics, food, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and more. Unfortunately, petrochemicals increasingly depend on vulnerable foreign supply chains. Moreover, current petrochemical manufacturing practices cannot readily pivot to make different products, which limits the ability of highly optimized manufacturing workflows to adapt to market changes or DoD needs.

Although some chemistry-based methods for distributed manufacturing can synthesize a wide-array of different products, these methods still rely on petrochemical precursors. Given the diversity of useful commodities that are made with petrochemicals, there is dire need for alternative petrochemical-independent production processes that can manufacture these same commodities in an agile, reprogrammable manner.

Alternative emerging technologies, like biomanufacturing, can produce similar organic commodities to petrochemicals, but these technologies are still developed to optimize yield at the cost of flexibility. Generally, biomanufacturing approaches design processes to produce a single commodity output from a single feedstock input. Increased supply chain resilience will be enabled by flexible processes to maintain production of important materials by consuming whatever feedstock is available at a given moment in time. Finally, when optimizing for yield, continuous processing is largely recognized as a superior approach compared to batch methods, but biomanufacturing today is almost exclusively practiced as a batch process. However, a major limiting factor for continuous biomanufacturing processes is the non-stationary nature of biological systems (e.g., genetic drift), resulting in a loss of yield as mutations direct metabolic flux away from production of a desired molecule toward replication and growth. To address these challenges, Switch aims to develop reprogrammable systems with unprecedented stability that will provide supply chain resilience and a pathway to continuous biomanufacturing.

Program Structure:

The program design features a 6-month Phase 0, and a 30-month Phase 1.

An initial program solicitation for a pre-determined Phase 0 award amount and contract type will be used. During Phase 0, performers will develop a technoeconomic analysis (TEA) and refine their overall technical approach for Phase 1, including identification of specific organisms and http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities other process variables as well as feedstocks and/or products that might lend themselves to a technically and commercially viable reprogrammable system. Phase 0 performers will be afforded the opportunity to interact with the Switch Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) team for consultation including TEA assumptions, calculations, and reporting. This interaction with IV&V, including early consideration of TEA results, is envisioned to de-risk and inform eventual transition pathways for industrial biomanufacturing. Phase 0 will result in a Concept Design Review (CoDR; 3 months after contract), including TEA results, and based on this CoDR, a subset of Phase 0 performers will be invited to propose for Phase 1 (30 months).

During Phase 1, performers will focus primarily on one of the four CONOPS as described above by addressing technical challenges include development of (1) “living metabolic libraries” consisting of genetic instructions and biochemical pathways for chemical synthesis, (2) “in-built switched control” for enabling response to external commands that toggle expression of genes between pathways, and (3) “reversible run-time updates” for packaging and delivering new genes and pathways. Depending on the primary CONOP, a performer’s chosen approach may differentially weight these three challenge areas. Switch does not aim to demonstrate scale-up of the technologies it develops, so to facilitate and maintain a focus on strain engineering and throughput, this work will be performed at volumes no larger than 250 mL. IV&V will replicate key aspects of successful technologies, as possible, in their labs at a 250 mL scale. Of note, approaches that are exclusively cell-free technologies are not in-scope for the Switch program.

Switch will result in a suite of tools and approaches to engineer run-time reprogrammable microorganisms that support a variety of possible manufacturing processes, at a BioManufacturing Readiness Level (BioMRL) 3.

Proposers Day Participation:

This Special Notice and Proposer’s Day include two opportunities for prospective proposers to identify team members:

1. Lightning Talks. Interested attendees are invited to submit one (1) MS Power Point or Adobe PDF slide that summarizes their interests and capabilities, along with a recorded voiceover no longer than 3 minutes, using the template provided (Attachment 1) with this notice and on the registration website. These will be presented during 3-minute “lightning talks” at Proposers Day. Submitted presentations consisting of multiple slides or a single slide with multiple layers will not be granted a time slot. Lightning talk submissions (no more than one per organization) will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, until the maximum possible number of submissions (given time constraints) is reached.

Interested attendees must identify their intention to submit the lightning talk during registration. Due to limited availability, DARPA does not guarantee that these requests will be fulfilled. Lightning talk submissions are restricted to those attending the meeting.

All presentations must be emailed to Switch@darpa.mil no later than 4:00 PM ET on June 4, 2024. Specific content, communications, networking, and team formation are the sole responsibility of the participants.

mailto:BRACE@darpa.mil

2. Teaming Profiles. Interested parties are also invited to submit a one- to two-page ‘teaming profile’ describing technical competencies, unique facilities and other capabilities, as they relate to the program, and desired technical/other competencies sought from other potential team partners. The profile must conform to the template provided with this notice and on the registration website and should include, at a minimum:

Contact information, to include name, organization, email, telephone number, mailing address, and website;

Brief description of the proposer’s technical competencies and relevant facilities;

Desired technical competencies and facilities from other potential team members, if applicable.

All conforming teaming profiles must be emailed to Switch@darpa.mil no later than 4:00 PM ET on June 7, 2024. Profiles that do not use the provided template (Attachment 2) and/or exceed the two-page limit will not be accepted. Information contained in teaming profiles shall be publicly releasable – profile submitters consent to distribution amongst event registrants.

After Proposers Day, the teaming profiles will be sent via e-mail to all registrants on June 10, 2024. Specific content, communications, networking, and team formation are the sole responsibility of participants. Neither DARPA nor the DoD endorses any participating organization, nor does DARPA or DoD exercise any responsibility for improper dissemination of the teaming profiles.

Registration Information:

PLEASE NOTE: Registration closes Tuesday, June 4, 2024, at 4:00 PM EDT Participants must register in advance through the registration website. Registration is free but limited by the webinar capacity of 350 participants, so early registration is recommended.

Interested parties are encouraged to coordinate attendance within their organizations prior to registration. Attendance is limited to no more than three representatives per division/department, with a maximum of five attendees from any one organization. Individuals who are unable to register because the deadline has occurred or capacity has been reached will be added to a waitlist.

Slots that remain open after registration closes or that become available due to cancellations will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis from the waitlist. An online registration form and various other meeting details can be found at the registration website, https://events.sa-meetings.com/SwitchProposersDay.

All registrants for the meeting who are not U.S. Citizens must complete and submit one of the following:

All U.S. Permanent Residents and Foreign Nationals must submit a DARPA Form 60, except foreign government personnel who must submit only an Official Visit Request completed by their respective Embassy based in Washington, DC.

All forms must be submitted no later than 4:00 PM EDT on June 3, 2024 (Note: This date is in advance of the meeting registration deadline). Form 60 submission instructions are provided on the registration website and in the registration confirmation email. Contact your Embassy staff for assistance in submitting the Official Visit Request.

mailto:BRACE@darpa.mil https://events.sa-meetings.com/SwitchProposersDay https://events.sa-meetings.com/SwitchProposersDay

Further administrative questions should be addressed to Switch@darpa.mil. Please refer to the Switch Proposers Day (DARPA-SN-24-70) in all correspondence. This announcement is not a request for abstracts or proposals; any sent will be disregarded.

DARPA hosts Proposers Days to provide potential performers with information on whether and how they might respond to the Government’s research and development solicitations; and to increase efficiency in proposal preparation and evaluation. Therefore, Proposers Days are open only to potential proposers who have registered.

This notice is issued solely for information and potential new program planning purposes; the SN does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals or proposal abstracts. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Submission is voluntary and is not required to propose to subsequent Broad Agency Announcements (if any) or research solicitations (if any) on this topic. DARPA will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred in responding to this SN. Respondents are advised that DARPA is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received, or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted under this SN.

NO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN THE SN RESPONSE.

mailto:BRACE@darpa.mil