NOI - A Non-Invasive Prognostic Biomarker - Circul

The National Institutes of Health, Office of the Director, Office of Acquisitions, is issuing a non-competitive Notice of Intent to award a firm-fixed-price purchase order to University of Alabama at Birmingham for research support to develop and validate circulating cell-free DNA as a blood-based biomarker of chlorine-induced acute lung injury, with responses due October 23, 2026, at 9:00 AM EDT.

This is a sole-source procurement under FAR 12.603 and FAR 6.302-3(a)(2)(ii), not expected to exceed the simplified acquisition threshold and carrying no small business set-aside. The work is performed at University of Alabama at Birmingham, 701 South 20th Street, Birmingham, Alabama 35294-0001. The NAICS code is 541380, Testing Laboratories and Services; PSC is Q301, Reference Laboratory Testing.

The requirement is unique to the Matalon Laboratory's validated murine chlorine inhalation injury model, mechanistic expertise, actively enrolling aspiration pneumonitis biorepository as a human proxy cohort, and existing collaborative infrastructure with the NHLBI Laboratory of Precision Omics; these capabilities are not available from any other source and are essential to project feasibility. Work includes exposure of equal numbers of male and female mice to chlorine gas, evaluation of acute lung injury post-exposure, measurement of bronchoalveolar lavage protein content and cell counts, plasma cytokines and chemokines, lung injury histology scoring, lung edema assessment, blood gas analysis, epithelial sodium channel activity, alveolar fluid clearance, hemopexin and heme quantitation, and lung mitochondrial DNA concentration and DNA lesion analysis. Approximately 288 mice, accounting for 20% mortality, will be used across various exposure regimens and sacrifice timepoints. The work supports continuity with peer-reviewed federal funding (NIH R01 HL031197).

Responses must include capability demonstration, pricing details (unit price, list price, shipping and handling, delivery timeframe and terms, prompt payment discount, F.O.B. point, product or catalog numbers), UEI, TIN, and business size certification. All offerors must be actively registered in SAM.gov. Point of contact is Nicholas Capobianco, Contracting Specialist, nicholas.capobianco@nih.gov.