Brand Name or Equal Medtrack Database Licenses

This Small Business Sources Sought Notice (SBSS) is for information and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The purpose of this Sources Sought Notice is to identify qualified small business concerns including 8(a), HUBZone or Service-Disabled Veteran-owned business concerns that are interested in and capable of performing the work described herein. The NCI does not intend to award a contract on the basis of responses received nor otherwise pay for the preparation of any information submitted. Your responses to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. An organization that is not considered a small business under the applicable NAICS code should not submit a response to this notice. This requirement is assigned North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 541519 with a size standard of $25 Million is being considered.

As a result of this Sources Sought Notice, the NCI may issue a Request for Quotation (RFQ) through FedBizOpps. THERE IS NO SOLICITATION AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. However, should such a requirement materialize, no basis for claims against NCI shall arise as a result of a response to this Sources Sought Notice or the NCI's use of such information as either part of our evaluation process or in developing specifications for any subsequent requirement.

This acquisition will be conducted under the procedures for acquiring commercial items authorized in FAR Part 12 and under the authority to use simplified procedures for commercial requirements as provided in FAR 13.501.

BACKGROUND
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute (NCI), Office of the Director (OD), Technology Transfer Center (TTC), plans to procure Brand Name or Equal Medtrack database licenses for five (5) users.

The mission of the TTC Marketing Group is to locate potential collaboration partners that would be interested in developing research discoveries from the NIH Intramural Research Program; to conduct due diligence on potential partners; and to understand the landscape of a wide variety of drug development efforts. TTC therefore requires access to timely data that describe the relative importance of different inventions and patents, and whether the cost of patenting them will be worth the time, effort, and costs. An integrated application is needed to aggregate the wide variety of database information sources.

The salient characteristics that apply to this acquisition are as follows:

• Comprehensive, integrated platform provides the development pipelines of
  small, medium, and large domestic and international pharmaceutical and
  biotechnology companies;
• Provides information to relevant business development, competitive
  intelligence, marketing, market research, and valuations;
• Provides unlimited, on-demand research support;
• Provides unlimited technical support within 24 hours;
• Provides unlimited, on-demand training;
• Provides unlimited, customizable watch lists and email alerts to monitor
  development activities across all of the aggregated platforms;
• Integrated platform provides unique capability to search across different
  databases simultaneously:
   o Past, present and forecasted sales of products-- can provide valuation
      estimates of NIH discoveries; 
   o Proprietary royalty database indicates royalties paid on licensed products-
      can enable TTC to estimate the valuation of NIH discoveries;
   o Companies' spending on research and development;
   o Companies' intellectual property such as patents;
   o Deals such as collaborations, mergers, and acquisitions;
   o Start-up companies' venture financing, grants, and contracts;
   o Therapeutics' modes of action, mechanisms of action, composition and
      structure, brand and generic names, biological targets, clinical trial
      information, and development history;
   o For due diligence, can investigate potential licensee history, including
      finances, investments, existing partnerships, management and their
      experience, IP portfolio, and drug pipeline (developmental,
      marketed, withdrawn drugs).
• Estimate valuations of NIH developmental drugs based on companies'
  financing rounds, public offerings, and disclosed financials
• Scheduled clinical trial and regulatory milestones, patent expiries, and sales
  forecasts for estimating a product's sales and royalties;
• Epidemiology studies that describe diseases, size and distribution of
  markets, and current and developing therapies for those diseases;
• Contains contact information and biographies of company managers and
  executives;
• The data is updated real-time;
• The user interface is easy to learn, with a Basic Search feature that is
  important for quick searches or for new users;
• A multi-tier, menu-driven Advanced Search integrates many different
  functions and search fields from multiple databases;
• Broad coverage of the patents behind current and in-development
  pharmaceutical and biotechnology products, and this is helpful in finding
  partners;
• Visualization of large, complex datasets to identify trends and relationships,
  and create dynamic timelines of drug development

SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Interested qualified small business organizations should submit a tailored capability statement for this requirement, not to exceed 20 single-sided pages (including all attachments, resumes, charts, etc.) presented in single-space and using a 12-point font size minimum, that clearly details the ability to meet the needs of the notice described above. Statements should also include an indication of current certified small business status; this indication should be clearly marked on the first page of your capability statement, as well as the eligible small business concern's name, point of contact, address and DUNS number.

All capability statements sent in response to this sources sought notice must be submitted electronically (via email) to Megan Kisamore, Contract Specialist, at megan.kisamore@nih.gov in MS Word or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), by July 31, 2015, 1:00 pm, EST. All responses must be received by the specified due date and time in order to be considered. CAPABILITY STATEMENTS RECEIVED AFTER THIS DATE AND TIME WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED. No collect calls or facsimile transmissions will be accepted.

DISCLAIMER AND IMPORTANT NOTES
This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to meet the needs of the requirement. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published on FedBizOpps. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation(s).

CONFIDENTIALITY
No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation.