f SOW ambis 2278150 B Statement of Work (002)-6_EVSEdit.doc

STATEMENT OF WORK (SERVICES)

(SOW)

GENERAL INFORMATION

Cytek Aurora Annual Contract

Statement of Need and Purpose:

This critical procurement is to purchase Service maintenance for the Cytek Aurora flow cytometer. This is necessary purchasing for our ongoing research experiments that began before January 20, 2025, and are directly related to human healthcare as they are aimed at the identification of most effective protocols for production of HIV envelope protein for vaccine use. These items are for an ongoing project related to our active research project entitled “Structure-Function Studies of the HIV-1 Envelope Glycoproteins”(ZIA AI001197-09), whose scope is to elucidate the structure-function relations in the HIV-1 envelope. To ensure timely action on this project, the items in this procurement must be purchased because the materials are related to patient samples, and we risk compromising the entire experiment if they are not purchased in time.

These intramural research studies are directly related to human healthcare and animal healthcare. Many of these instruments are in secure Biosafety containment areas. Without a service contract there, these machines would likely fail to support this research, putting individuals at biosafety and biosecurity risk because samples would need to be transported elsewhere to be analyzed or could not be characterized as absent of biohazards. These instruments are used to ensure that only appropriate experiments are done to ensure in a way that the American people are safe from science research, but are also made more healthy for it, concentrating on allergy, infections, and automimmune diseases that are important to the American people.

The Cytek Biosciences provides timely, cost efficiently and most reliably On-Site Flow Cytometry Services that includes

Maintenance and Repair

Service maintenance for the Cytek Aurora flow cytometer ensures the optical alignment, fluidics, and unmixing algorithms work flawlessly.

This is critical for T cell and B cell research, which relies on resolving 40+ marker panels , separating dim and rare cell subsets, and extracting high autofluorescence .

Background Information and Objective:

This procurement is for a service maintenance agreement for a flow cytometer that is used to both analyze and separate cells that originate from a human, non-human primate, or mouse that is experiencing some kind of infection, an autoimmune response, an allergic response, or a normal control to one of these groups. Often this instrument is used directly on clinical samples that come from the NIH clinical center with patients who are experiencing adverse events.

Cytek Aurora flow cytometer is the most important instrument for our ongoing research experiments that began before January 20, 2025, and are directly related to human healthcare as they are aimed at the identification of most effective protocols for production of HIV envelope protein for vaccine use.

The Cytek Aurora is a full-spectrum flow cytometer that accelerates vaccine research by allowing scientists to deeply profile immune responses at the single-cell level. It tracks how immune systems react to vaccines by analyzing upwards of 40+ markers simultaneously in a single tube.

Several key ways that the Cytek Aurora supports vaccine development include:

· High-Parameter Immunophenotyping: Scientists can analyze over 40 distinct immune cell markers at once. This creates a comprehensive "snapshot" of the immune system to accurately monitor how a vaccine stimulates T-cells, B-cells, and antibodies.

· Deep Immune Profiling from Small Samples: Because it maximizes the amount of data extracted from a single, tiny sample, researchers save precious blood or tissue material while gathering broader biological insights .

· Enhanced Sensitivity: The Cytek Aurora captures the entire emission spectrum of fluorescent dyes rather than just specific bands . This allows researchers to easily separate overlapping signals and identify rare or low-expressing cell populations.

· Autofluorescence Extraction: Vaccine samples often contain cells with high natural fluorescence (autofluorescence), which can obscure the data. The instrument automatically removes this background interference, resulting in cleaner, high-resolution data.

· Reproducibility Across Studies: The system ensures that multi-center, longitudinal clinical trials produce consistent and standardized biological data over time.

Therefore, when Cytek aurora machine operate correctly they use lasers and other sensitive machinery to find out information from the cells that we would not be able to otherwise observe. Similarly, Cytek aurora machine are very sensitive and require a lot of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual maintenance from trained scientists and highly specialized technicians. This agreement would ensure that these machines are continuously maintained and no break in mission critical analysis occurs because of instrument failure. Furthermore, having highly specialized technicians perform these services means that the data will be reproducible and defensible in accordance with building public trust in science and making Americans Healthy.

Period of Performance:

This is a 12 months service contract. Specifically 11/01/2026 – 10/31/2027

SCOPE OF WORK

General Requirements:

Independently and not as an agent of the Government, the Contractor shall furnish all the necessary services, qualified personnel, material, equipment, and facilities, not otherwise provided by the Government as needed to perform the Statement of Work below:

Cytek Biosciences must provide service (labor), preventative maintenance, and machine parts, its corresponding lasers (as itemized), and handlers. Diagnosis of the needed repair needs to occur within 24 hours. Service and parts to fix the instrument need to be provided within 48 hours of alerting the service provider of the need.

Cytek Biosciences provides timely, cost efficiently and most reliably On-Site Flow Cytometry Services that is critical for T cell and B cell research, which relies on resolving 40+ marker panels , separating dim and rare cell subsets, and extracting high autofluorescence .

Specific Requirements:

The Cytek Biosciences Gold Service Plan provides premium, comprehensive protection for your flow cytometry equipment to maximize uptime and ensure peak performance. This all-inclusive plan features unlimited coverage for repair parts, labor, and engineer travel, alongside priority response times and expedited service scheduling. Additionally, it guarantees at least one annual on-site preventative maintenance visit to optimize your system, as well as unlimited technical support via phone or email whenever you need assistance.

Level of Effort:

Cytek Biosciences offers multi-tiered On-Site Services and Repair Plans for the Cytek Aurora, with preventative maintenance performed primarily by Field Service Engineers .

Key Labor Categories

· Field Service Engineer (FSE): The primary labor category. These are OEM factory-trained technicians who conduct on-site preventive maintenance, hardware diagnostics, and emergency repairs.

· Technical Applications Specialist (TAS): A secondary support labor category for remote or on-site support. These specialists assist with assay optimization, general scientific consultation, panel design, and troubleshooting.

Estimated Labor Hours per Period of Performance (1 Year Cycle) a standard 12-month period of performance involves the following estimated labor hours:

· Preventive Maintenance (PM) Visits: Typically, an annual or bi-annual PM takes 4 to 6 hours per visit to complete, totaling roughly 8 to 12 hours of FSE labor per year.

· System Recertification (if applicable): If coverage lapses, recertification requires 3 hours of baseline labor, plus any additional FSE repair hours required.

· Emergency Repair Coverage (On-site): If you opt for comprehensive coverage (like the Gold Service Plan), emergency FSE labor is unlimited and averages 4 to 8 hours per on-site repair visit.

· Scientific/Applications Support (TAS): Remote or on-site TAS support for assay troubleshooting and scientific consultation typically ranges from 1 to 4 hours per occurrence.

The plan includes unlimited coverage for repair parts, labor, and travel, priority or guaranteed response times, preventative maintenance, and unlimited technical support.

Government Responsibilities

The service technician will require access to the rooms where the instruments are stored. This will be restricted to M – F business hours. We will provide a printer as needed and additional consumable (regents) that are accessories to general and technical maintenance, and other material to test the specifications of the machines as needed. A service report will be provided to the responsible user scientist to ensure that service is met as expected.

Delivery or Deliverables

Specification reports will be delivered at the time of service completion.

Reporting Requirements

A federal employee scientist will be provided with a service report either as part of the hardware within the flow cytometer, attachment via email, and/or print out. The technician will communicate any issues that arise with the maintenance of the machine via email.

Other Considerations

Travel is inclusive of this agreement. Travel includes either machine travel from NIH campus to the depot and return, or travel of the technician onsite to work on the instrument. No additional travel is required.

Key Personnel:

Customer service and sales associates will provide triage support when using telephone support of the instrument.

Information System Security Plan:

1 workstation (excluding printers) is included in this agreement for

Data Rights:

All data generated from the instrument will be maintained as government official records.

Any training material that is provided will be section 508 compliant. Federal government will work with the equal employment opportunity office to provide reasonable accommodations to users who use the instrument.

Publications and Publicity:

All publications and publicity will be handled solely by the federal government.

Confidentiality of Information:

The contract is not expected to generate information or date which is confidential. If the contractor does generate this, they should provide it to a federal government employee immediately. This information will be handled as is required by federal regulation.

ATTACHMENTS

1. Independent Government’s Cost Estimate

2. Evaluation / Selection Criteria

3. Quotes Version 11-30-2016-1

FAR Part 11—Describing Agency Needs