One (1) Fluidigm Hyperion time-of-flight mass spectrometry imaging system.

The Veteran s Administration (VA) Office of Research and Development, Service Area Office East in Pittsburgh, PA intends to negotiate on a sole source basis with the Fluidigm Corporation based in San Francisco, CA. The requirement is to provide one (1) time-of-flight mass spectrometry system for planned VA medical studies.
The specific system required shall include the following characteristics as minimum specifications:
The system shall use cytometry time-of-flight mass spectrometry (CyToF).
Shall enable comprehensive analysis of cellular phenotypes and their interrelationships.
Shall accomplish spectrographic documentation of 2D slides prepared with metal-labeled antibodies via traditional immunolabeling protocols
Shall combine high-parameter CyTOF technology to detect differences in the mass of metal-tagged antibodies with imaging capability
Shall allow visualization of up to 37 protein markers out of the box .
Shall provide imaging with ~1µm2 subcellular resolution within the slide s spatial 2D context of the tissue microenvironment.
Shall provide an optimized workflow solution with pathologist-verified metal conjugated imaging antibody portfolio.
Shall maintain a dual mode capability to accomplish the interrogation of cells in suspension as well as cells or tissues on slides to view spatial context and cellular morphology.
Shall take less than 12 hours to switch between modes.
Shall have a cellular time of flight mass cytometer
Shall have a tissue imager featuring a laser ablation unit
Shall provide an integrated computer workstation.
Shall use a Nd: YAG deep UV solid state laser for ablation.
Shall provide an optical system with UV focusing components of laser source to
Shall have an ablation chamber with sample slide positioning stages for sub-micron positioning accuracy.
Shall have a coupling system with tubing connection between the tissue imager and the mass cytometer for transferring ablated sample streams to the ICP for analysis.
Shall include an ICP ion source.
Shall have a 5-stage vacuum system with 2-stage plasma-vacuum interface and TOF turbo-pump.
Shall have an ion-neutral decoupling ion deflector.
Shall have a high-pass ion optic and point-to-parallel focusing lens system.
Shall have an Orthogonal TOF analyzer operated at >75000 spectra/second TOF cycle frequency.
Shall have a discrete dynode ion detector.
Shall have a detection system based on 1 GS/s 8-bit signal dual digitizing boards.
Shall have a direct sampling spray chamber for individual cell assays.
Shall have a microconcentric nebulizer.
Shall have a automatic single sample pneumatic sample loader.
Shall have an auto optimization feature Instrument control and data handling CyTOF MS software.
Shall have at least 135 Channels
Shall have a quantitation mass range of 75-209 Da
Shall have an abundance sensitivity of 0.3% for 159 Tb
Shall have a sampling frequency of at least 200 pixels / sec
Shall have a detection limit of 400 copies per µm2
Shall have a dynamic range of at least 4 orders of magnitude
Shall provide automated calibration
Shall not have cross-cell contamination (re-deposition) greater than 2% (selected direction)
Shall not have pixel-to-pixel crosstalk greater than 15% at 200 pixels/sec
Shall be able to accomplish full ablation in 7 µm wet tissue thickness
Shall be able to image / process / quantify an addressable sample size on slide of 15 mm x 45 mm or smaller
The system software shall have an Imaging software suite for image acquisition and data analysis to include as a minimum:
Production of high-quality images from the ionization of metal-tagged antibodies through precise conversion of the scanned cells and tissues into TIFF images of publication quality.
Provide statistical data, including dual counts for each region of interest.
Allows export of data for cell population segmentation.
Higher-order analysis to measure differential expression of markers within a cell and between cell populations with statistical significance and in spatial context.
Allows for the determination of spatial relationships between cells within the tissue and can be represented with t-SNE maps in histoCAT software.
Shall be able to produce t-SNE clusters of the resulting high-dimensional data into 2D maps. Following the reduction in dimensionality, the cell populations must be able to be gated and mapped to tissue images created in histoCAT.
Shall be able to co-localize markers using neighborhood function guided by the user, to identify subpopulations of cells that are in close proximity to the population of interest.
Shall be able to be toggled between histology and t-SNE to a spatially resolved digital profile of cell subpopulations within the tissue sample to identify biomarker relationships and unique cellular social networks.
Shall have a file type of TXT, multipage TIFF, OME-TIFF, or MCD.
Shall be able to scan an area of 1 mm2 in ~2 hr (at 200 Hz sampling frequency).
Shall have a workstation with the following minimum requirements: Motherboard HP® Z840 Workstation, CPU 1 and 2 Intel® Xeon® E5-2643 v4, 3.40 GHz, 2400 6C, RAM 64 GB DDR4-2400 (8 x 8 GB) 2 CPU RegRAM, Graphics card NVIDIA® Quadro® K620, 2 GB Graphics (DL-DVI+DP), DVD 9.5 mm Slim SuperMulti DVD-RW 1st ODD, Keyboard HP USB keyboard US, Mouse HP USB optical mouse, Chassis HP Z840 1,125 W (1,450 W/200 V) 90% efficient chassis, RAID controller LSI 9270-8i SAS 6Gb/s ROC, RAID Card, Storage drives HP 2 x 256 GB SATA SSD RAID 1, Western Digital® 4 x 4 TB, 7200 RPM SATA, RAID 10, Monitor Screen size ~34 in.
Shall provide a preferred data file size that does not significantly exceed for most applications sizes reasonbley similar to MCD 4 5 MB/channel, TXT 6-8 MB/Channel.
The signal intensity shall be linearly proportional to number of metal-tagged antibodies.
Shall have no overlap between mass channels.
The system shall use total detected signal generated from total amount of ablated tissue to allow absolute quantitation.
The provider shall provide a means for multiple markers to be used for nuclear and membrane images thus enabling high quality cell segmentation and quantitation.
Shall accomplish operation under conditions with zero photobleaching to allow long-term specimen storage such as archiving.
Shall enable signal detection methods that introduce zero autofluorescence.
Shall allow use of sample types to include, but not limited to, FFPE, cryosections and suspension cells immobilized on slides.
The system provider shall provide experienced US-based service and support available with the following as a minimum:
Highly trained Field Application Scientists to help with metal conjugated antibody assay design, experimental design, optimization and troubleshooting for mass cytometry applications.
Experienced Field Service Engineers to install and repair mass cytometry equipment.
Custom antibody conjugation service available to assist with labelling antibodies with rare earth metal tags including biochemical and biological validation with titration on biologically appropriate cells.
Catalog of pathologist-verified metal conjugated imaging antibodies
The requirement will take place at a VA Puget Sound Healthcare System located in Seattle, WA. The sole source is pursuant to FAR 6.302-1 Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals, however; any responsible source who believes it is capable of meeting the requirement may submit a capability statement and supporting documentation to the contracting office no later than Wednesday, November 21, 2018, (10:00 AM, EST). Interest/capability statements may be sent to Michael Haydo at Michael.haydo@va.gov. No telephone responses will be accepted. A determination not to compete the proposed requirement based upon the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government..